St. Luke Drawing the Virgin: Detail of the Virgin's shoulder

Detail of the Virgin's shoulder ; As the patron saint of painters, Luke is usually shown in his atelier sketching the Virgin and Child sitting before him. Here, however, the saint kneels at a prie-dieu in a Renaissance hall with a tempietto adorned by a statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. The Virgin and Child appear as a vision, supported by putti that prepare to crown the Virgin as Queen of Heaven. The early 1520s was a time of growing religious tension, when the Protestant theologian Martin Luther preached against religious imagery. Gossaert's pictorial strategy offered an argument... Mehr ...