The Meeting at the Golden Gate

This panel was part of the altarpiece in the main chapel of the church at the Royal Monastery of Santa María in Villanueva de Sigena, Huesca. It was produced around 1515–19 and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Nowadays, the altarpiece is divided between several museums and private collections in Spain and elsewhere. The panels in the Huesca Museum were part of Valentín Carderera's donation. They are: The Meeting at the Golden Gate, The Birth of The Virgin Mary, The Annunciation, and The Visitation. Researchers have been able to create a hypothetical reconstruction of the altarpiece by comparing dimensions and iconography. This would have been one of the side panels in the altarpiece's main tier. The cycle of Joachim and Anne (the Virgin Mary's parents) is not based on the canonical gospels, but taken from the Apocryphal gospels. The scene of the meeting at the golden gate of Jerusalem, popularized in the Late Middle Ages in Jacobus de Varagine's Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) refers to the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Recent studies have identified the Master of Sigena, who painted the altarpiece, as the Central European painter Rodrigo de Sajonia.