The Haller Madonna painting on the obverse depicts Mary and an athletic-looking, jowly Jesus, with a window looking out to a distant view.

[1] It features coats of arms in the lower corners, both representing prominent families from Dürer's home town of Nuremberg, Germany.

The daughter of the printer Anton Koberger (publisher of the famous Nuremberg Chronicle, a landmark of incunabula) had married the young nobleman in 1491.

Wolf Haller initially entered his father-in-law's business as a helper and traveler, but after a few years he fell out with him and fled to Vienna, where he died in 1505.

[3] Since the two scenes on either side of the artwork are unrelated, it has been suggested that the paintings are intended as private devotional images, each depicting one example of a just life and God's grace.