The Virgin Mary as Mother of Sorrows,

The ‘Mother of Sorrows’ is the earliest painting in the Dürer collection in Munich. Together with seven scenes depicting the ‘Sorrows of the Virgin’ (Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen), this fragment was once part of a large panel painting measuring 188.5 by 136 centimetres, probably painted for Frederick the Wise for the palace church in Wittenberg. It was sawn into sections in the sixteenth century. The cropped shell, of which the edge is still recognisable, is one of the earliest Renaissance motifs to be found north of the Alps.