The Visitation

The Visitation — Mary's journey to her cousin Elizabeth shortly after the Annunciation, where Elizabeth's unborn child John leaps in the womb in recognition of Christ — was a subject that allowed the Master of the Life of the Virgin to explore the private, feminine emotional world he painted with particular sensitivity. In Cologne painting the Visitation typically showed two women in intimate embrace, translating the theological significance of the meeting into human tenderness. The subject was important for Cologne's Elizabethan and Marian religious houses.

The master places Mary and Elizabeth in a landscape setting whose trees and distant hills show awareness of Flemish naturalistic convention, though the figures themselves retain the full-faced Cologne type. The embrace is rendered with careful attention to the placement of hands — a compositional device used to express emotional connection without facial expressionism.