Virgin and Child with Four Saints (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Virgin and Child with Four Saints (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Mary and Jesus are seen in front of a wall in a garden that alludes to the Garden of Paradise. They are depicted between four saints: Saint Catherine, John the Evangelist, Jodocus, and Mary Magdalene. The saints wear costumes fashionable around 1475 to 1480. The hanging is said to come from the parish church in St. Lawrence in Nuremberg, Franconia, Bavaria, one of the most important in the commercial city. The appearance of Jodocus may indicate that the textile may have been donated by a wealthy citizen of the same name.

Object facts

• Title: Virgin and Child with Four Saints
• Date: c. 1500
• Culture: Germany or Switzerland, Upper Rhine
• Type: Tapestry
• Technique: tapestry weave: linen warp, wool and silk wefts
• Dimensions: Overall: 78.7 x 154.9 cm (31 x 61 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1939.162

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., for the Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Guiffrey, Jules. Les tapisseries du XIIe à la fin du XVIe siècle. Paris: E. Lévy, 1911.
• Kurth, Betty. Die deutschen Bildteppiche des Mittelalters. Wien: A. Schroll, 1926.
• Luitpold. Die fränkische Bildwirkerei. Firenze: Pantheon Casa Editrice, 1926.

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.