基督告别母亲

Altdorfer worked in Regensburg on the Danube around 1520, and he was doing something new for his time: letting the landscape almost swallow the sacred story. Here Christ is saying goodbye to his mother before going to Jerusalem to die. Mary has fainted with grief, held up by the other women. But look at the enormous unruly tree that dominates the panel, and the swirling cloud beyond the arch that glows red in the evening light, a quiet echo of the blood he will shed. The parting scene itself is not in the Gospels. It came from German devotional writing and the Passion plays staged in towns like Augsburg. Altdorfer painted it in tempera on a small panel, the kind of intense private image a wealthy person would pray before at home.