The Virgin and The Child with two angels

These remarkable productions, embellished with gold highlights and a refined execution technique, have escaped, for a reason that is unknown to us, the attention of scholars of the German painter. They must, however, be ascribed to his hand and dated, due to strong similarities of pictorial with the Nativity of the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden (Inv. no. 1907 A: Friedländer -Rosenberg, 1978, p. 90, n. 101), to the years between 1515 and 1520.

F. Russoli (1955, p. 141), which already suggested that chronological reference, rightly noted that in this "Subtle grace of tiny handwriting", you can still see the memory of Altdorfer. Both the iconographic point of view and the composition of the two works reveal a strong influence of North Italian painting, perceived perhaps, in this case, through Lombard models (the influence of Bergognone is particularly noticeable in the figure of St. John the Baptist).

It should however be noted that the morphology of the landscape little corresponds to the one that the painter usually proposed in the second decade of the sixteenth century, a background of trees of very similar to this one appears in an Adam and Eve, dated 1549, which according to ancient documents it is for Lucas Cranach the Younger.

There probably was an inscription on the lower part of the panel which was then eliminated; the signature-logo is original on this panel.

It is interesting to note that the iconography of the Immaculate Conception from 1550 was no longer permitted in the protestant areas however Cranach uses it anyways.

[http://www.museopoldipezzoli.it/userfiles/1037_1038.pdf] (accessed 21.05.2013)