Virgin and Child in Glory

When Altdorfer painted this panel, around 1518, the rosary was one of the best-loved prayers in the German lands. In the 1470s a Dominican, Jakob Sprenger, had founded a rosary confraternity in Cologne, and people far beyond the city asked to have their names entered in it. A priest in London wrote in 1486 that he had registered his patron's name. Similar brotherhoods followed, under Dominican care, in town after town. The museum reads the picture through that devotion. Mary appears as Queen of Heaven, and the message is that through her the faithful reach the kingdom of God, with the rosary as the way there. The panel is painted on both sides. On the back, which is rarely shown, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb of Christ on Easter morning. The wood is lime, and the panel stands about 66 centimetres high.