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Geertgen tot Sint Jans (circle), The Tree of Jesse, c. 1500
Jesse, the father of King David, lies asleep in a walled garden. From his body grows a tree, and in its branches sit the kings of Judah in the fashion of the painter's own time. At the very top are Mary and the child.
The image turns Isaiah's sentence into a family tree and joins it to the list of ancestors at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel. The panel comes from the circle of the Haarlem painter Geertgen tot Sint Jans; who painted it is disputed. The nun who kneels at the lower left had herself painted into the garden.
Jesse sleeps on the grass. The trunk rises from his body.
At the top of the tree: Mary with the child, the last shoot.
A nun in a white habit kneels at the foot of the tree.
