Trittico Mérode

This little triptych was made in the workshop of Robert Campin around 1430, in the Netherlands, and it does something new for its moment. The Annunciation, the angel telling Mary she will bear Christ, does not happen in a heavenly space. It happens in an ordinary middle-class living room, with cushions, a copper basin, and a town visible through the windows. The right-hand panel is the strange one. Joseph sits in his carpenter's shop building mousetraps, one on his bench, one in the window. It was a known idea in the period that Christ was the bait set to trap the devil, so Joseph, quietly at work, is making the theology of the whole scene with his hands. The donors who paid for it kneel in the left panel, peering in through an open door.