The Virgin and Child seated by a Tree

Depictions of the Virgin and Child were amongst the most popular of all devotional images. Dürer's elegant little engravings of this subject must have been continuously in demand and he created engravings and woodcuts of the motif at regular intervals throughout his career. For the present work he borrowed elements from earlier compositions; the wooden planks of the bench appear in the The Holy Family with a Butterfly, the wooden fence is reminiscent of the Virgin and Child on a grassy Bench and the large tree trunk with the thinner offshoot to the side first appeared in the Virgin and Child with the Pear (see lot 22). What he added to this print however was the interplay between the Virgin and Child. As Mary has her eyes closed and leans her face affectionately against the head of the child, He turns and gazes intently at the viewer.
Although on a smaller scale, Dürer in this exquisite engraving of 1513 approaches a similar brilliance and technical complexity of engraved marks and textures that he achieved in the so-called 'Meisterstiche' (see lots 23 and 24) created that and the following year.