Presentation of the Virgin

The 13th century Golden Legend which relates the childhood of the Virgin Mary after the accounts in the early New Testament apocryphal literature, tells how 'when she had accomplished the time of three years, and had left sucking, they brought her to the Temple with offerings. And there was about the Temple, after the fifteen psalms of degrees, fifteen steps or agrees to ascend up to the Temple, because the Temple was high set... And then Our Lady was set on the lowest step, and mounted up without any help as she had been of perfect age, and when they had performed their offering, they left their daughter in the Temple with the other virgins... And the Virgin Mary profited every day in all holiness, and was visited daily of angels...' The theme is found in western Christian art from the 14th century—rarely before—either as a separate scene or as part of the cycle of the life of the Virgin. The child is seen climbing the steps of the Temple, not always fifteen in number, towards the high priest Zacharias, who awaits her at the top. She is generally represented as of rather more than three years of age. The aged Joachim, her father, and her mother Anne stand at the foot of the steps, with onlookers, or follow behind her; or, contrary to the text, help her to mount. Counter-Reformation painting adds a devotional aura to an otherwise narrative subject by depicting the child kneeling before the high priest, with angels overhead, perhaps swinging censers. The theme illustrates not merely the carrying out of the requirements of Jewish law concerning the firstborn, which in any case took place in early infancy, but was meant as a visible symbol of the Virgin's consecration as the "chosen vessel" of Christ's Incarnation. The fifteen "psalms of degrees" are numbers 120–134, known as the Psalms of Ascents, or "Little Psalter of the Pilgrims," and may once have constituted a separate group. They were sung by Jewish pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the three annual pilgrim festivals, or were chanted on the fifteen steps that, according to Josephus, separated the women's court from the men's at the Temple.