|
This scene depicting the Virgin Mary venerated by a donor and St Jerome, takes place in a grassy garden bounded by a low stone wall, which evokes the 'hortus conclusus' (enclosed garden) of the Song of Songs, a Mariological symbol of virginity popular in sacred literature and art of the fifteenth century.
Formerly the panel was attributed to an anonymous Florentine painter of the second half of the fifteenth century under the influence of contemporary German art. However, now the panel is recognized as Bavarian and is assigned to the Master of the Munich Marian panels, a master probably active in Munich in the mid-fifteenth century, named after an Annunciation and a Nativity in the Kunsthaus, Zurich. The composition remained in its original state for only a decade or two before being reworked by another artist with the addition of the trilobed area at the top.
|
