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The Virgin of the Dry Tree (Madonna of the Dry Tree)
c. 1465 · Oil on panel · Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Sizes
image 17×24 in on a 18×24 in sheet
What is dpi?
Dots per inch: how many pixels of the museum’s file go into each inch of paper. Our floor is 240 for sheets up to 20 inches, 180 up to 36 inches and 120 beyond, because a larger print is seen from further away. We never offer a sheet below the floor, and the number on each size is the one you receive.
Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 308 gsm cotton rag · pigment inks · printed to order
Printed to order · the whole painting, never cropped · if it arrives damaged, we replace it
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All editionsAbout this painting
The tree is dead, all thorns and bare limbs, and Our Lady stands in it holding the Christ Child, as if she had grown there. Gold letters hang from the branches. Maryan Ainsworth finds the source of Petrus Christus's small painting in Ezekiel 17:24, where the Lord makes the dry tree flourish: the Tree of Knowledge, withered when Adam and Eve ate its fruit, made to live again through the Virgin. She reads Mary as the graft on the dead tree and the Child as its fruit, the thorny limbs His crown. She counts fifteen golden A's, the first letter of the Ave Maria, one for each decade of the rosary, the Ave read in medieval interpretation as Eva reversed. The Thyssen-Bornemisza ties the work to the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree, to which Christus and his wife belonged. The fruit hangs among the thorns.
Sources: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 'The Virgin of the dry Tree', inv. 121 (1965.10); read 2026-08-27. · Maryan W. Ainsworth, Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994), cat. 18, 'Madonna of the Dry Tree', pp. 162-165.
And all the trees of the country shall know that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, and exalted the low tree: and have dried up the green tree, and have caused the dry tree to flourish. I the Lord have spoken and have done it.
Ezechiel 17:24 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner)