The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple

Luke's Gospel says that when Jesus was 12, his parents lost him on the way home from the Passover feast in Jerusalem. After three days they found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening and asking questions. In this Viennese panel of around 1445 to 1450, which the Belvedere assigns to the workshop of the Master of Schloss Lichtenstein, the boy sits high on a Gothic throne, one hand raised as he speaks. The teachers below are dressed like scholars of the painter's day. One spreads a long written scroll across his lap, one bends close over an open book, another lifts a finger, and one rests his cheek on his hand. Mary stands at the side with Joseph, her arms crossed on her breast. The pointed tracery above them belongs to a neo-Gothic frame, modelled on traces of the original.