The Virgin and Child at the Breast

Dürer finished this small panel in 1503, and there is no patron on record for it. Pictures this size went to the open market in Nuremberg, and by then a buyer wanted one as much for being a Dürer as for the Virgin on it. He was working hard on Marian subjects in those years, cutting most of the woodcuts for the Life of the Virgin, a series he only published complete in 1511, and turning out single prints of the Mother of God. An engraving he made that same year, of Mary sitting on a grassy bank, has the child in almost the same position, head tucked in and one arm folded while he feeds. The panel carries none of the usual signs of holiness, nothing pointing at what is coming to the child, just a woman nursing a baby. It is about 24 centimetres tall, and strips were added to both sides of the wood at some later date.