The Visitation, from "The Life of the Virgin"

The Visitation, from "The Life of the Virgin" is a masterful woodcut created by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer between 1503 and 1504. This piece forms part of Dürer's highly influential series, The Life of the Virgin, which comprises twenty individual prints documenting key events in Mary's story. The overall series, executed primarily during Dürer’s Nuremberg residency, cemented his reputation as the preeminent master of the graphic arts.

The subject depicts the biblical meeting between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Dürer’s composition focuses on the intimate connection between the women, who are shown embracing on a threshold, framed by deep architectural elements and set against a meticulously detailed landscape. The emotional resonance of the meeting, central to the New Testament narrative, is subtly rendered through their gestures and focused gaze.

Dürer’s revolutionary approach to the woodcut medium elevated the status of prints from mere illustration to independent works of art. Unlike earlier, often crude woodcuts, Dürer utilized sophisticated cross-hatching and precise line weight to achieve unprecedented texture, depth, and volumetric shading, techniques often associated only with engraving. The technical brilliance of this print series ensured its widespread circulation during the German Renaissance. This iconic impression of The Visitation is housed in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Due to the historical significance and age of the print, high-resolution images of this masterwork are widely available in the public domain for study and reference.