Artwork Page for Joachim's Offering Rejected by the High Priest

Details / Information for Joachim's Offering Rejected by the High Priest

Series Title: The Life of the Virgin

Joachim's Offering Rejected by the High Priest

c. 1504–1505

Albrecht Dürer

(German, 1471–1528)
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Culture
Germany, early 16th Century
Medium
woodcut
Credit Line
Dudley P. Allen Fund 1959.99.2
Catalogue raisonné
Meder 189
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print

Description

The first three woodcuts of Dürer’s narrative (1959.99.2-4) portray the events leading up to the Virgin’s birth. According to an apocryphal text, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna, had remained childless into old age. After Joachim’s offering at the temple was rejected for this reason, the angel Gabriel appeared to him in the wilderness to announce that his wife would soon bear a child. At this news, the two tenderly embraced at the city’s gate.
A vertically oriented print in dense black-inked fine lines depicts people with light skin tones gathering under a stone arch. Behind a draped table, a man in a pointed headdress reaches toward a kneeling man holding a lamb. To the left, another man holds a lamb near a child. Curtains hang below a central chandelier while fine hatching defines the draped forms. A monogrammed tablet rests centrally at the bottom.

Joachim's Offering Rejected by the High Priest

c. 1504–1505

Albrecht Dürer

(German, 1471–1528)
Germany, early 16th Century

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