La Virgen del clavel

Durer painted this in 1516, home again in Nuremberg after two long stays in Italy, at a point when he was working for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First. The Child holds a single carnation, and the flower is not decoration. Its clove-like shape and scent had long linked it to the nails of the Crucifixion, so a viewer would read it as a quiet reminder of the Passion. Durer sets the Virgin square to us, nearly frontal, a pose that deliberately recalls the old devotional icons of the eastern church rather than the softer Italian Madonnas he had just been studying. He works the surface with his usual patience, every strand of hair and fold of cloth described. It is a small panel made for private prayer, not for a public altar.