The Expectant Madonna with Saint Joseph Oval Metal Tree Decoration

This detail from an early 15th-century panel painting by an anonymous French artist focuses on the faces of three figures: an angel, the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM), and St. Joseph. The angel, with multi-colored, upright wings and dressed in white, smiles as he gently leads a gravid—that is, very pregnant—Virgin Mary to the place where she will deliver her babe, fulfilling the first part of God’s plan for the salvation of mankind. Mary, dressed in a dark blue robe and matching mantle, her head humbly bowed, meekly follows the angel’s lead. She is serenely calm and introspective. And, finally, a fretful, elderly St. Joseph watches from behind an elaborately woven, waist-high tapestry hung as a privacy curtain (not visible here) as his young wife is led away to give birth in a different account of the Nativity from the apocryphal Gospel of James. + Image Credit (Front): Detail of The Expectant Madonna with Saint Joseph, by an anonymous 15th-century French painter, c. 1425/1450, tempera on a European walnut panel. Dimensions (image): 27 3/4 × 13 3/4 in. (70.5 × 35 cm.); (with integral frame [not pictured here]): 32 11/16 × 19 × 2 3/4 in. (83 × 48.3 × 7 cm.). The Samuel H. Kress Collection, The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Accession Number: 1952.5.32. This image is in the public domain. + Back: The text is a translation from the Latin of the refrain of a 16th-century sacred Christmas carol.