Albrecht Dürer

Depictions of the Virgin and Child were of course amongst the most popular of all devotional images. Dürer's elegant little engravings of this subject must have been continuously in demand and he seems to have created engravings and woodcuts of the subject at regular intervals throughout his career. For the present work he borrowed elements from earlier compositions; the wooden planks of the bench appear in the The Holy Family with a Butterfly (lot 2), the wooden fence is reminiscent of the Virgin and Child on a grassy Bench (lot 62) and the large tree trunk with the thinner offshoot to the side first appeared in the Virgin and Child with the Pear (lot 96). What he added to this print however was the interplay between the Virgin and Child. As Mary has her eyes closed and leans her head affectionately against the Child, the Christ Child turns and gazes intently at the viewer.