シュトゥッパハの聖母

Grünewald began this around 1514, at the same time he was at work on the Isenheim Altarpiece, the harrowing crucifixion that made his name. An Aschaffenburg cathedral canon named Heinrich Reitzmann commissioned it as the centre of a three-part altar dedicated to Our Lady of the Snow, and the frame carries the artist's monogram and the finishing date of 1519. The Virgin sits with the child in a landscape crowded with meaning, a rainbow, a walled garden, a distant church. It is one of only a handful of finished paintings Grünewald left. The two side wings were separated from it long ago, and this central panel now hangs not in a great museum but in the small village church of Stuppach.