2-976-933 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Triptych with Virgin and Child with Saints (center), male Donor with Saint Martin (left, inner wing), female Donor with Saint Cunera (right, inner wing), and the Annunciation (outer wings), c.1500-c.1510. The centre panel of this triptych shows the Virgin and Child seated on a lawn studded with flowers within a walled garden On the rear corners of the wall, with stretches of water behind them, are three musician angels on the left and Joseph on the right. Ringbom identified the two sumptuously attired women in the foreground as sibyls, prophetesses from classical antiquity, who are foretelling the coming of Christ, but other authors believe that the right to be in the enclosed garden was reserved for female saints. The woman with the book on the left is hard to identify as a specific saint. According to Ringbom she is the Cumaean Sibyl or the Cimmerian Sibyl, who is drawing the Child’s attention to the vision in the sky above. The woman on the right offering the Virgin a flower from her basket could be St Dorothy. The nude Christ Child standing on Mary’s lap has turned his head to look up at the vision in an aureole in the heavens, which foretells his Passion. It shows two angels who have pulled aside the curtains in front of a tabernacle to reveal the many instruments of the Passion, the arma Christi, consisting of the crown of thorns, the flagellation post, the lance and the ladder, and busts of Pilate (with the jug of water and bowl), the priest Caiaphas (with a mitre), Peter (with the cockerel), and the maidservant who recognised him as one of Christ’s disciples. Seated at the table, on which there are nails, a hammer, pincers and a scourge, is God the Father, who is pointing at a rush basket.