The third wise virgin

In the biblical parable of the ten virgins, heaven is likened to a bridegroom’s house, outside which five wise and five foolish virgins wait. The five foolish virgins miss their opportunity to enter his house, since by the time the bridegroom arrives they are away seeking more oil for their extinguished lamps. In contrast, the wise virgins, who come prepared with supplies of lamp oil, enter the house and marry. 

This engraving depicts one of the wise virgins with a wedding wreath in her hair and holding a lamp upright. It is part of a series of ten prints of the ten virgins by Martin Schongauer, the most important fifteenth-century German painter and engraver prior to Albrecht Dürer. As the first painter to produce a significant number of engravings, Schongauer set an influential example for the young Dürer, who in 1492 travelled to Colmar to meet him, only to find he had died the previous year.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs