The Virgin on the crescent with a sceptre and a starry crown.

One of the themes which most preoccupied the creative talents of Albrecht Dürer is that of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. His concern with this image was almost lifelong, and second only in importance to his involvement with the Passion of Christ. At first glance this could be taken to reflect the average Renaissance artist’s response to the prevailing concerns and commissions of the time, for the cult of the Virgin Mary reached a peak in Germany around 1500. Pilgrimage sites dedicated to the devotion of Mary displayed her relics at various times of the year, and each prominent town in Germany had a church dedicated to her.

In Nuremberg, Dürer’s home town, the Liebfrauenkirche was commissioned as early as 1349 by Emperor Charles IV, who dedicated it ‘to the honour of the principal intercessor of the Holy Roman Empire, the most pure Virgin Mary’. It stood in the centre of the city, facing Nuremberg’s newly established marketplace.

A chronological survey of Dürer’s works shows that he was involved with the subject matter throughout his mature career. In all, fourteen copperplate engravings of the Virgin and Child survive, and there are five woodcuts, about twenty paintings and over seventy drawings.

A distinctive feature of Dürer’s small-scale devotional images of the Virgin and Child is their repeatedly referred to ‘life-likeness’, all the more apparent for the seeming lack of dogmatic religious attributes. In the engravings Mary, following a popular northern European tradition, is predominantly shown seated outdoors on a bench, rarely ever on a throne, and never without the Christ Child. Generally Dürer omitted the crown as well as conventional halos for Mother and Son, unless presenting them as a heavenly vision, as in this engraving.

The Virgin stands on a crescent moon, holding Christ in her arms (he holds an apple). She holds a sceptre, and wears a high crown topped with stars. Light streams out from behind her in an aureole or mandala. This reflects the 'woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars', often identified with the Virgin, in the Book of Revelations (12:1). This print relates closely to an earlier engraving of 1508 (B.31), The Virgin on the crescent with a crown of stars, where the moon has a partially obscured, upward looking face. The child's handling of the apple is more satisfactorily resolved in the later print.

Te Papa also has in its collection the related engraving of 1514, The Virgin and Child on the crescent with a diadem (B.33), (1952-0003-149).

See Angela Hass, 'Albrecht Dürer's devotional images of the Virgin and Child', http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/albrecht-durers-devotional-images-of-the-virgin-and-child/

Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art  December 2016