Goossen van der Weyden

All seems calm in the foreground of this picture – Saint Joseph leads a placid (and delightfully hairy) donkey on which the Virgin Mary sits feeding the Christ Child. But look closer and the atmosphere changes. This is a family fleeing a massacre: the Massacre of the Innocents. When King Herod le...

The Virgin Mary – the figure in blue – has gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who had become pregnant miraculously. The picture illustrates their meeting as described in the Gospel of Luke, which tells how Mary went from Nazareth to Juda, where Elizabeth lived.The woods and hills behind are cris...