Upper Rhenish Master
Paradise Garden
1410
Painted around 1410–1420 by an anonymous Upper Rhenish master, 'The Little Garden of Paradise' is one of the jewels of late-medieval European painting — a tempera panel just 26 cm tall. Inside a walled hortus conclusus, the Virgin sits reading while Saint Catherine gathers cherries, Saint Dorothy picks flowers, and the Christ child plucks a psaltery, surrounded by more than twenty identifiable species of wildflower, along with butterflies and songbirds. The miniaturist's technique rewards close, almost microscope-like observation. The panel is among the most famous medieval works in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
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Image source: Wikimedia Commons