Birth of the Virgin

On the inner fa�ade above the door the multifigured scene of Mary’s birth is painted. It is a visual and iconographic counterpart to the altarpiece, the Annunciation, an oil painting by Reni.

The picture is structured into foreground, middle distance, and background. The dominant impression is one of bustling familiarity in the women’s chamber. The influence of D�rer’s woodcut is apparent inn the layout of the picture and the design of St Anne’s bed in the background. However, borrowings from Ghirlandaio’s Mary cycle are also apparent. The size of the individual figures lends the event a certain solemnity; the women exhibit an ideal monumentality that is indebted to Raphael.