Nuremberg Altar of Mary: Mary and Elizabeth

The companion panel from the Nuremberg Marienaltar showing Mary and Elizabeth — the Visitation — depicts the same moment as the Klosterneuburg master's version: the meeting of the two cousins after the Annunciation and Elizabeth's recognition of Mary's sacred pregnancy. For the Nuremberg Master, the subject allowed a focus on the intimate human encounter between two women, rendered within the more sophisticated workshop context of late fifteenth-century Nuremberg painting. The Visitation appeared in virtually all Marian cycle altarpieces of the period.

The two figures are shown in close physical contact — the embrace that is the iconographic core of the scene — with Elizabeth slightly older, Mary younger and more serene. The Nuremberg Master differentiates them through physiognomy, costume, and emotional register. The architectural or landscape setting is rendered with the spatial ambition characteristic of Nuremberg workshop production of this decade.