La Visitazione

This small panel shows a meeting from the Gospel of Luke: the pregnant Mary has travelled to visit her older cousin Elizabeth, herself unexpectedly expecting the child who will become John the Baptist. Rogier van der Weyden painted it around 1437, early in his Brussels career, and he stages the encounter not in the Holy Land but on the doorstep of a solid Flemish house, with a wide northern landscape rolling away behind. The two women each rest a hand on the other's belly, reading the news in each other's bodies. Off to the side, near the door, Elizabeth's husband Zacharias plays with a dog.