The Madonna with the Siskin

The Virgin Mary dressed in a blue robe is enthroned with the child who is sitting on a red cushion on her lap amidst a broad landscape. At her feet in the right of the picture is John the Baptist as a boy, identifiable by his “hair shirt”. An angel accompanies John the Baptist, carrying his cross staff. John is handing the Mother of God a bunch of lilies of the valley. Mary’s right hand is resting on a book. The Christ child, hardly covered by his open little shirt, is holding a pacifier in his right hand, of the kind that used to be given to children to comfort them. A siskin has alighted on his left, raised arm. Christ is inclining his head as if listening to the bird. The figure of the Mother of God is framed by the bright red baldachin of the otherwise invisible throne, on either side of which there is a view into a broad landscape with ruins and farmsteads between trees. Two cherubs are hovering above of Mary’s head, crowning her with a wreath of red and white roses. At the front left on a little table lies a note with Dürer’s inscription: “albert(us) durer german(us) / faciebat post virginis / partum 1506 AD”.
According to this, Dürer painted the picture in Venice in 1506 – as other sources also lead us to conclude – at around the same time as the large panel depicting the Feast of the Rosary (Prague, Národní Galerie, fig. left), which Dürer painted for the German merchants in Venice. The Madonny of the Siskin is actually a portrayal of the Mother of God with a rosary, for the angels are crowning her with one as a symbol of the heavenly joys that Mary will experience in her beatitude. The red and
white blossoms allude to the mysteries of the rosary, the suffering and joy in the life of Mary. The depiction also contains other symbolic allusions. The lilies of the valley are among the earliest flowers to blossom in the year and hence herald spring and new life. They have thus become a symbol for the advent of Christ. With their sweet smell and white colour of innocence, the blossoms are a symbol for the Mother of God and her Immaculate Conception. The name of the flowers – convallaria – also
recalls a metaphor in the Song of Songs, referring to Mary: “I am a rose of Sharon and a lily in the valley”.
The siskin is reputed to eat thistles and other prickly plants. This, in turn, is an allusion to Christ’s crown of thorns and his Passion. The bird whispering in the ear of the child can thus be interpreted as the child being told of his mission and his suffering to come. The bird is also a symbol for the contingency of Christ becoming man and for the Passion. The prominent position accorded to the book is clearly a reference to the Holy Scriptures in which the birth of the new king is prophesied.
Now it has been fulfilled. The ruins in the landscape are no mere artistic detail, either. At the time, they were generally known to stand for the palace of King David, where, according to legend, the hut where Christ was born stood. David’s palace alludes on the one hand to the royal origin of Christ from the lineage of David; on the other hand, its ruinous state stands for the decline of the Old Covenant, for through Christ God has concluded a New Covenant with mankind.
The motif of the Christ child with a siskin evidently has a long tradition. A Bohemian picture of the Virgin Mary from Most dating from before 1350 testifies to this. The inclusion of John the Baptist as a boy in the depiction of the Mother of God indicates Italian models, which Dürer may have encountered in Venice. He probably brought the painting back with him to Nuremberg. Wilhelm H.Köhler | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting – Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019