Madonna and Child

The Berlin museum owns the only existing print of this small-format, historically hand-coloured engraving by the Master E. S., which shows the mother of God with the baby Jesus; both of them appear to the viewer in a fully mortal, almost intimate form. The brocade curtain behind Mary is a traditional honorific motif. The chapel space symbolically refers to the idea of Mary as the Church, the house in which Christ resided during his incarnation. The apple in the child’s left hand plays on his role in the salvation from original sin.