page_title: Madonna of the Dry Tree
section_title: Our Lady of the Dry Tree
hierarchical_section_title: Madonna of the Dry Tree / Our Lady of the Dry Tree
caption_attribution_description: Our Lady in the Oak
context_page_description: Madonna of the Dry Tree is a small oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1462–1465 by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. Unusually innovative and dramatic, it presents the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child while standing on a disembodied dead tree trunk and surrounded by a crown of thorns.
  The painting's imagery is thought to be derive from the Book of Ezekiel, with the dry tree a symbol of the withered Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, brought to life by the Virgin and the birth of Christ. The 15 golden "A"s hanging from the branches of the tree represent the first letter of the Angelic Salutation, the Ave Maria. The Christ Child holds an orb crowned with a cross. The iconography may draw from the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree in Bruges, to which both Christus and his wife Gaudicine belonged.
context_section_description: Art historian Grete Ring connected the iconography to the Bruges confraternity of "Our Lady of the Dry Tree". Christus joined the "Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree" sometime around 1462–63. Both confraternities were patronized by members of the upper echelon of Burgundian society; Philip the Good's wife Isabella of Portugal, as well as most of the leading Burgundian nobles, upper-class families and foreign traders of Bruges, such as the Portinaris. Christus joined – for the same reason Gerard David would some years later – to attract wealthy patrons. 
  Philip the Good is believed to have established the confraternity after a successful battle against the French. Beforehand, he is said to have prayed to an image of the Virgin carved on a dry tree. Although the confraternity already existed, the story reveals the veneration of images of the Virgin carved on trees.  The tradition of Marian images on trees, either suspended or carved, was a blend of pagan and Christian worship originating as early as the fifth century. Such trees were commonly found in crossroads, functioning as landscape markers. Our Lady of the Oak and Our Lady of the Cherry are others in the same tradition.
  It was first documented in 1396, but had probably been established earlier. Records show the Confraternity met in a private chapel, located in the Church of the Minorites (or Franciscans) which was destroyed during the Netherlandish Reformation in 1578.
caption: Our Lady in the Oak Meerveldhoven, Veldhoven, Netherlands, represents a tree with an image of the Virgin venerated since the 13th century.[6]
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