The Presentation in the Temple

In the early 1840s a German painter, Johann Anton Ramboux, travelled through Tuscany copying old frescoes and buying gold-ground panels by the early masters, which could still be had cheaply. Between 1841 and 1843 he acquired this Presentation in the Temple and its companion Nativity, both from the same altar frontal, and took them home to Cologne. When his collection was auctioned there in 1867, the catalogue gave the two scenes to Guido da Siena with a cautious “probably”. They passed through dealers in Munich and Lausanne, the Louvre bought them together in 1968, and his name is still on them.

The scene follows the Gospel of Luke. When the Child was 40 days old, Mary and Joseph brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem, and the old man Simeon, who had been promised he would not die before seeing the Messiah, took him in his arms. Here the Child twists away from Simeon and reaches back toward his mother, whose hands are still held out. Behind Simeon stands the prophetess Anna with her scroll, and Joseph carries the two doves that poor families offered at the Temple.