Joachim and the Angel

The Bible makes no mention of Mary’s early years, but apocryphal texts such as the Protevangelium and the Golden Legend give us information about Mary’s life before the birth of Christ.

Mary was born to aged parents, Joachim and Anne, residents of Jerusalem. Joachim was a kind and pious man, but he and his wife had yet to conceive a child. When Joachim’s offering to the temple of Jerusalem was refused by the high priest because of Joachim and Anne’s childlessness, Joachim withdrew to the desert to atone and fast for 40 days. This is the scene depicted in Dürer’s print as a picturesque northern landscape. An angel appears to Joachim with news that his wife will bear a daughter. In Dürer’s representation, this momentous message is conveyed by an official document hung with wax seals, which the angel carries. The angel instructs Joachim to return home, and, after his moving reunion with his wife before the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, Anne conceives Mary.

Dürer designed 17 woodcuts between 1502 and 1505 for his series The Life of the Virgin, adding two additional prints in 1510. In the following year, he published the set in book form, with a Latin text and frontispiece. The 19 woodcuts present an intimate narrative of Mary’s life, moving from such episodes as her Birth and Marriage, to the Annunciation and Nativity of Christ, and finally to her Death, Assumption, and Coronation. Since many of the prints appeared long before their publication in book form, Dürer sold a number of them as single sheets, without the text printed on the back. When it was published in 1511, The Life of the Virgin was usually bound together with sets of Dürer’s Large Passion and a reissue of the Apocalypse.