Mary with the child on the lawn bench

Unknown artist

During his journeys at Dürer in Nuremberg, Baldung designed the woodcut “Maria mit dem Kind auf der Rasenbank” around 1505/07. The composition was based on Dürer’s copper engraving “Maria mit der Meerkatze” (cf. Mende 1978, p. 43 and I C 27 of the State Library Bamberg). The crowned Maria sits, accentuated by a discreetly decorated plate bus and wrapped in a bobbing robe, on a lawn bench. She gently holds the naked Jesus boy, who is also equipped with a plate bus, on her lap, who takes a playful grip on her décolleté and looks at the viewer. Behind the image staff, a river course leads the view into the distance of the landscaped landscape. As Heller described in his Dürer publication of 1827, in which he had included the sheet under the heading “Doubtful Leaves,” the religious devotional image was printed with German and Latin text. There are deductions with the Dürer monogram, which was subsequently integrated into the representation. (Cf. Heller Dürer 1827 II.761.1995)