Mary with the Christ-child next to a plant trough

Mary with the Christ-child next to a plant trough, at the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, is a devotional panel by Stefan Lochner, the leading master of Cologne painting in the mid-fifteenth century. Lochner's distinctive style combined the refined elegance of the International Gothic tradition with the more structured naturalism coming from the Netherlands. The domestic setting—Mary beside a garden trough—places the sacred figures in a paradisiacal garden, a setting rich with theological symbolism connecting Mary to the enclosed garden of the Song of Songs.

The Virgin and Child are placed in a luminous garden setting indicated by the plant trough and surrounding vegetation. Lochner renders their faces with the delicate, idealized refinement characteristic of his Cologne workshop: fine hatched strokes of tempera over a pale gesso ground produce the smooth, translucent flesh tones that distinguish his work.