Altar of Mary: Presentation in the Temple

The Master of the Polling Panels's Altar of Mary depicting the Presentation in the Temple, painted around 1444 and now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, depicts the episode from Luke 2 in which Mary and Joseph bring the forty-day-old Jesus to the Jerusalem Temple for the purification rite, where the elderly Simeon takes the child in his arms and prophesies. The Presentation was a key event in the liturgical cycle known as Candlemas and was depicted in countless altarpiece programs throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods.

Tempera on panel. The interior of the Temple is rendered with the Bavarian Gothic tradition's characteristic treatment of Gothic architectural space — pointed arches and vault ribs framing the sacred encounter between the child Christ and the prophetic Simeon.