[4] Madonna of the Rose Bower was painted in 1473 as a reredos for St Martin's Church, Colmar's largest Christian sanctuary, and stood there until it was stolen in January 1972.

[1] In 1480, Schongauer and his assistants had also painted a monumental polyptych for that church; this work (Retable des Dominicains), which has only partially survived, is today kept in the Unterlinden Museum.

[5] The theme and the general composition present similarities with Stefan Lochner's earlier and much smaller Madonna of the Rose Bower, while the appearance of the Virgin is modelled on Rogier van der Weyden's Saint Columba Altarpiece; apart from being life-sized and clad in red instead of blue, Schongauer's Virgin has however a markedly different facial expression than Van der Weyden's.

[2] The current Gothic Revival frame of the painting is a work by the sculptor Jacques Alfred Klem (1872–1948).

[6] A small 16th-century copy of Schongauer's painting, which is today kept in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts,[7] shows the original state of the Madonna of the Rose Bower before it was cut down on all sides at an unknown date.