The Holy Trinity between the Lady of Sorrows and Saint Giles

At the centre of this panel is the Trinity in the old form called the Throne of Mercy: God the Father holds up the body of the crucified Son while the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between them. On one side stands the Virgin as the Lady of Sorrows, the mother grieving her son's death. On the other stands Saint Giles, a hermit who is nearly always shown with the hind that sheltered with him in the forest, a saint invoked against plague and for a peaceful death. Baldung painted it around 1514, in the years he was based at Freiburg. Setting the grieving mother and the healing hermit on either side of the dead Christ gathers the whole picture around a single theme, comfort at the hour of death. Look for the small deer beside Giles, the sign by which his age knew him at once.