Mary Going to the Temple, Four Female Saints, and a Female Donor and her Daughters

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

This fragment of an altarpiece shows the young Virgin Mary praying in the Temple of Jerusalem. According to the apocryphal Gospel of James, Mary's parents pledged her to the temple at age three, in thanks for the miracle of her being born without sin (the Immaculate Conception). Here, Mary is an exemplar of piety for the kneeling woman and her five daughters, the female members of the family who donated the altarpiece. The haloed women standing behind them are probably their name saints, magnified to show their spiritual importance: we can identify Saint Apollonia holding a tooth in pincers and Mary Magdalene with a jar of oil.

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