The Virgin Crowned by Angels (c. 1450): Art, History and Details

The Virgin Crowned by Angels (c. 1450) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Stefan Lochner (German, 1400-c. 1452).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Two angels, barely visible against a dark background, crown Mary as the Queen of Heaven. Her slight features are made more substantial by her elaborately draped, brilliant crimson mantle. Holding the Christ child, she stands on a floor scattered with red and white roses, symbols of her purity. Green palmettes enriched with costly gold thread decorate the velvet. Since silk velvet was not woven in the north, Italian velvets were frequently depicted in northern paintings during the 1400s. Lochner is thought to have come from Meersburg in southwest Germany, and is recorded as being in Cologne by 1442, where he was paid for decorations in connection with the celebration of the visit of Emperor Frederick III. He was elected town councillor by the painters’ guild in 1447 and 1450. There are no records of him after 1451.

Object facts

• Title: The Virgin Crowned by Angels
• Date: c. 1450
• Creator attribution: Stefan Lochner (German, 1400-c. 1452)
• Culture: Germany, Cologne
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 68.5 x 47.5 x 7.5 cm (26 15/16 x 18 11/16 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 50.5 x 29.2 cm (19 7/8 x 11 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Medieval Art
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1968.20

A detail from the museum

Although they are barely visible, two angels are holding the crown above the figure of Mary.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wolfgang Stechow. "A Youthful Work by Stephan Lochner." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 55, No. 10 (Dec., 1968)
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1968.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 56, no. 1 (1969).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.