The massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem

The Massacre of the Innocents confronted painters of the early fifteenth century with a rare licence for enacted violence — Herod's soldiers cutting down infants while mothers clutch them or beat the soldiers back. This panel by the Master of Schloss Lichtenstein, dated around 1450, would have formed part of a narrative sequence recounting the life of Christ, the slaughter serving as a typological link to later martyrdom. Bavarian patrons of the period favoured such cycles for private chapels, where sequential panels could guide extended meditation. The artist's handling of the chaotic subject reflects northern European conventions: overlapping figures, gestural despair, and an absence of architectural grandeur that intensifies the scene's brutality.

Tempera on panel. Figures are arranged in overlapping layers to suggest crowd density without true perspective recession. The palette relies on contrasting reds — garments and blood — against more muted grounds, a deliberate strategy for legibility from a distance in chapel settings.