The Visitation, from Selmecbánya

This painting – perhaps the best-known panel work in medieval Hungarian art – shows the meeting between Saint Elizabeth, who is pregnant with the child who will become Saint John the Baptist, and the Virgin Mary. Every element of nature that surrounds them – following the words of the Magnificat (Canticle of Mary) – is in praise of the Lord. This idyll, however, is mere illusion: the barren rocks,…