Life of the Virgin

Works may be in any medium: frescoed church walls and series of old master prints have many of the fullest cycles, but panel painting, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, stone sculptures and ivory carvings have many examples.

In this case, as very often, other scenes, such as the Visitation, including Mary are contained in the complementary cycle of the Life of St John the Baptist on the walls.

Ghirlandajo has large rectangular spaces to fill, and avoids scenes with only a few participants (and with no opportunity for showy costumes), except for the Annunciation.

The influence of these stories never disappeared entirely, partly because the canonical Gospels give few details of Mary's life before and after the years around the birth of Jesus.

In the West the Pseudo-Matthew was the dominant apocryphal source; in the East, slightly different versions, all equally deriving from the Protoevangelium of James, were preferred.

[11] The evolution during the 13th century of the illuminated Book of hours gave another important location for cycles, as did the gradual development of more sophisticated altarpieces for the Lady Chapel, or at least a side-altar, which all large churches had.

Dürer largely eclipsed these at the beginning of the 16th century with his cycle of 19 woodcuts on the Life of the Virgin (c. 1501-11) essentially following Schongauer's composition in his secene of the Death.

After the decrees of the Council of Trent in 1563, many of the apocryphal scenes, and late medieval introductions like the Swoon of the Virgin, were attacked by writers like Molanus and Cardinal Federigo Borromeo.

The Marriage of the Virgin by Giotto ( Scrovegni Chapel ).
Crucifixion , Descent from the Cross , Lamentation of Christ , Betrayal of Christ , Pilate washing his hands, Christ bearing the Cross, Presentation of Christ in the Temple , Finding in the Temple , from a 15th-century Book of Hours
Hans Memling 's so-called Seven Joys of the Virgin . In fact this is a later title for a Life of the Virgin cycle on a single panel. Altogether 25 scenes, not all involving the Virgin, are depicted. 1480, Alte Pinakothek , Munich [ 2 ]
Death of the Virgin , Hugo van der Goes , ca. 1480
The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary and the Virgin of the Rosary, a Rosary-based cycle.