The Nativity of the Virgin

The oldest account of Mary's birth, written in the late 2nd century, opens by calling her father Joachim a very rich man, and late medieval painters took that at its word. This panel, painted in Styria around 1490 to 1495, sets the birth in a well-furnished bedroom of the painter's own time. Anne sits up in a curtained bed under a red cover. A young woman with her hair loose down her back holds out the newborn, already dressed in a green gown and wearing a halo, and Anne raises her hands toward her daughter. Joachim, holding a knotted stick, lifts a hand at the edge of the bed. On a small table carved with Gothic arches stand a glass, a little pan with a handle and a tall cup, and a pair of slippers lies under the bed on the patterned tiles.