Paradise Garden

Paradise Garden

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.

Exhibition Venue

Image source: Wikimedia Commons