The Lord God is in the Details

The most famous painting from Cologne contains almost countless details - and not one of them is an end in itself. Look at the ornamentation that has been worked into the Virgin’s halo: it is a simplified representation of the lunar cycle and points to the mediaeval link between astronomy and theology. The tiny broach Mary is wearing echoes the main image in symbolic form, because if shows a virgin maiden (Mary) with a unicorn (Christ). The overall composition is based on an invisible grid, which was devised using an old Cologne measure: a hidden reference to the order in the divine plan of salvation. Like the cogs of a complex clockwork, these elements all interlock to produce an extremely subtle theological message.