Expectant Madonna with Saint Joseph (Detail) Blank Holiday Card

In this early 15th-century arched panel painting by an anonymous French artist, the birth of the infant Jesus is imminent. Beneath a golden crown being lowered from heaven on high and supported by two bright red angels (not visible here), another, a larger, smiling angel with multi-colored, upright wings and dressed in white, 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. In the hand not held by the angel, she carries a medieval bag book, probably a book of Scripture. Two much smaller female figures wearing aprons follow after the BVM. They are neither angels nor children. They are "Emea" (the midwife") and Salome who attended Mary in the Nativity story as recounted in the apocryphal Gospel of James. Their small stature indicates their lesser importance in the scene. Behind an elaborately woven, waist-high tapestry hung as a privacy curtain, a fretful, elderly St. Joseph watches as his young wife is led away to give birth. + Image Credit: 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.