The Birth of the Virgin

Anne is seen sitting up in bed and receiving the swaddled babe from the hands of the wet nurse. Her head is wrapped in a frilled bonnet. The artist offers us a richly nuanced exploration of the relation of the two women to each other, of their loving care and their gestures. The composition is particularly eloquent at the centre, where it most evocatively makes its spatial impact in the offering and receiving of the child, who is in the depth of the relief, and in the interplay of the gestures. The expressions on their faces are well characterized: the wet nurse, focussed on Mary, is caring, Anne looks pensive and tenderly affectionate, while the chubby-cheeked baby wears an expression of wide-eyed indifference. Another scene from the retable to which this relief belongs, which was probably made in the northern Netherlands, has survived: the meeting of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.