The Visitation

In the story told in Saint Luke's Gospel, the youthful Virgin Mary, pregnant with the Christ Child, rejoices with her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who is miraculously pregnant with Saint John the Baptist despite her infertility and advanced age. Elizabeth's weathered face and stooped back form a vivid contrast to Mary's youthful appearance and graceful stance. The anonymous artist stressed Mary's pregnant condition by placing her distended abdomen in the center of the composition, framed by the women's hands.

The receding landscape and illusionistic border demonstrate the artist's ability to defy the two-dimensional quality of the flat page. Atmospheric perspective pushes the rolling horizon into the distance, while brown monochrome gives the border the character of wood carved in shallow relief.