Altar of Mary: Birth of Christ

The Master of the Polling Panels's Altar of Mary depicting the Birth of Christ, painted around 1444 and now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, shows the Nativity scene — the infant Christ lying in the manger, worshipped by Mary and Joseph, with angels, the ox and ass of prophecy, and the first shepherds arriving from the fields. The Nativity was the single most frequently depicted subject in Christian art, and its treatment in the Polling altarpiece would have established the devotional rhythm and visual program of the monastery church's main altar.

Tempera on panel. The composition follows the classic Nativity arrangement with the Virgin adoring the Child who lies on the ground before her — a posture derived from the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden that had transformed Nativity iconography in the previous century.