The Trinity and Mystic Pietà

Hans Baldung had trained in Nuremberg under Durer, the most gifted man in that workshop, and by 1512 he was on his own in Strasbourg, the city where he had grown up. He painted this there. The subject was already old-fashioned by his day. God the Father holding up his crucified son, with the dove of the Holy Spirit between them, was a way of showing the Trinity that had been common a hundred years earlier and had largely fallen out of use. Mary and John weep at the sides, and two family coats of arms mark the donors who paid for it. Baldung signed the work as though he were a stonecutter, carving his mark and the date into the painted marble of the tomb, just above the women's heads.