The Virgin as queen of heaven suckling the infant Christ

Baldung's Virgin as Queen of Heaven Suckling the Infant Christ from 1539 is a late devotional work that combines the intimate subject of the nursing Madonna—Maria Lactans—with the formal iconography of the heavenly queenship, giving the maternal subject a celestial dignity. The nursing Madonna was an ancient devotional type emphasizing Christ's true humanity through the physical vulnerability and dependence of his infant existence, and the combination with the coronation imagery of the Queen of Heaven enriched the intimate domestic subject with its theological context within the drama of Incarnation and Redemption. Baldung's late treatment of the subject maintains his characteristic combination of precise figure observation and devotional seriousness, demonstrating the consistency of his engagement with major Marian subjects throughout a career that spanned four decades of German painting's most turbulent transformation.

The late painting demonstrates Baldung's refined final style, combining the symbolic crown with the naturalistic nursing scene in a devotional image of tender majesty.