La Virgen y el Niño bajo el manzano

Cranach painted this Virgin in Wittenberg, the same small Saxon town where Martin Luther had launched the Reformation, and where some reformers were now arguing that holy images should be stripped from churches altogether. He went on making tender Madonnas anyway, for patrons who still wanted them. The child on Mary's arm holds an apple, and that apple is the point. It is the fruit Eve took in the garden, the fruit of the Fall, and by placing it in Christ's hand the picture casts Mary as the second Eve and her son as the one who repays the debt. Behind them a small castle sits on a rock above a river, the kind of Saxon backdrop Cranach used again and again.