A detail of the angels that is about the Virgin

The title works by subtraction. It names the Virgin illuminated, and it locates her inside the Concert of Angels — that is, inside the part of the altarpiece where the chorus is. The entry is therefore an angelic subject describing something other than an angel. A catalogue organised by rank has to be able to say that plainly: the unit here is a region of a structure, not a figure, and the figure the title picks out of that region is not a member of the host at all.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates this entry to 1516 and gives Matthias Grünewald, filed as German and Northern Renaissance. The measured colour family is brown. No location is recorded for this entry, and no dimensions are recorded — as for every detail entry on this site. The subject fields include religion, mythology, fantasy and photography.

Above every order

There is one thing the title settles about rank, and it settles it by position. In the tradition Western art inherited, the Virgin stands above the entire angelic hierarchy — the devotional title Queen of Angels, which another entry in this catalogue carries, says so in three words. A detail that pulls her out of a chorus and names only her does the same thing pictorially. Eight entries here are filed under this painter and six name the Isenheim Altarpiece; this is the one where the angels are the setting and somebody else is the subject.