Christ Taking Leave of His Mother

Christ lifts his hand in farewell to his mother before setting out for Jerusalem and his death; the Virgin collapses among the grieving women at the left while Peter and John wait at the right, and tiny donors kneel in a corner. The episode appears in no Gospel - it grew from medieval meditations on Mary's sorrow - and Altdorfer sets it in a soaring forest, the great trees and luminous sky nearly overwhelming the figures. For the Danube School he led, landscape was never mere backdrop but a presence in its own right. His blazing Resurrection is also in this collection, the same love of light turned from grief to glory.