Triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints (c. 1510): Artwork and History

Triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints (c. 1510) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as South German.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

In this triptych, Mary, crowned as the queen of heaven, is surrounded by female saints in an enclosed garden (called a hortus conclusus) evoking paradise. Singled out on the right wing is Saint Ursula, thought to have been a British princess who set out on a pilgrimage to Rome, only to be martyred along with her throng of companions, depicted here at a miniature scale. Saint Agnes, another martyr of the early Christian era, is on the left wing. The gold framing arches refer to the combination of gilded sculpture and painting that was a common feature of German altarpieces in this period. The emphasis on youthful, female saints suggests that this was a devotional triptych for a community of nuns.

Object facts

• Title: Triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints
• Date: c. 1510
• Artist attribution: South German
• Place of origin: Germany
• Medium: Oil and tempera on panel
• Dimensions: Framed overall: 155 × 241.3 × 8.3 cm (61 × 95 × 3 1/4 in.); Left wing: 154.7 × 60.4 × 8.3 cm (60 7/8 × 23 3/4 × 3 1/4 in.); Center: 155 × 120.1 × 8.3 cm (61 × 47 1/4 × 3 1/4 in.); Right wing: 154.7 × 60.4 × 8.3 cm (60 7/8 × 23 3/4 × 3 1/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1065

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.