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With a tender smile on her face and slightly leaning forward, Mary greets Elizabeth, the other figure that belonged to the pair of statues. The scene, which in the lives of the Virgin and Elizabeth precedes the births of Christ and of St. John the Baptist, must have once filled the central case of a winged altarpiece. The hem of Mary’s dress was originally decorated with gold and precious stones. Of the latter, only the mounts survive. The provenance of the work is unknown: it probably comes from Arnold Ipolyi’s collection. Mary’s figure has an extraordinarily fine line; art historians have likened it to similar female figures in Austrian painting around 1430-40 and to a statue of St. Ladislas of Hungary that is conserved in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest.