The Virgin and Child with Eight Angels in a Landscape
Medium
Woodcut
Dimensions
Sheet: 14 15/16 × 10 3/16 in. (37.9 × 25.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1924
Accession Number
24.38.1
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
Hans Baldung Grien’s 1511 woodcut *The Virgin and Child with Eight Angels in a Landscape* captures a tender moment of divine intimacy set within a serene natural world. The Virgin Mary cradles the Christ Child at the center of the composition, surrounded by eight angels, several of whom play musical instruments. This arrangement evokes the harmony of heaven while inviting viewers into a peaceful, almost pastoral scene. Created during the Northern Renaissance, the print reflects the era’s growing interest in both religious devotion and the natural landscape. Baldung, a gifted pupil of Albrecht...
About the Artist
Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien) · 1484–1545
Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545), born in Schwäbisch Gmünd into an erudite family of jurists and physicians, forsook academia to pursue art. His early training around 1500 took place in the Upper Rhineland, likely Strasbourg, before he apprenticed under Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg from 1503 to 1507. There, the young artist honed his skills in painting, printmaking, and stained glass, even managin...