Mary with the Christ-child and an angel

Baldung's Mary with the Christ-child and an Angel from 1539 is a late devotional work demonstrating his continued engagement with Marian subjects deep into his career, when the Reformation had significantly altered the market for traditional Catholic devotional painting in his Strasbourg base. The late date—Baldung died in 1545—places this among his final works, and the subject's persistence in his oeuvre suggests either the survival of Catholic patronage in Strasbourg or commissions from the surrounding Catholic territory of the Upper Rhine. His late devotional works maintain the expressive power of his mature style while showing the influence of decades of observation and technical development. The angel's presence in the composition adds a celestial witness to the intimate devotional subject, elevating the domestic Madonna image toward a formal vision of the heavenly court.

The late devotional panel demonstrates Baldung's refined mature technique, with softer handling than his more dramatically expressive early works.