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Simeon's Song
Stefan Lochner, The Presentation in the Temple, 1447
- Painter
- Stefan Lochner
- Collection
- Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt
- Scripture
- Luke 2:22
- Published
- 5 October 2026
- Image
- Wikimedia Commons, public domain ↗
Before a golden altar Mary offers two doves, and the old Simeon, in a priest's red cope, holds the child above the altar cloth. In the foreground a row of children with candles walks past, ordered by size.
Lochner painted the panel in 1447 for the church of the Teutonic Order in Cologne. The candles belong to the feast that remembers this day forty days after Christmas: Candlemas, on 2 February. The doves are the offering of the poor that the law allows in place of a lamb.
The children with their candles, from the smallest at the front to the tallest at the back.
A knight of the Teutonic Order in his white cloak with the black cross holds a sheet of writing.
Above the altar God the Father appears among blue angels.