Marriage of the Virgin in the context of "Espousals of the Blessed Virgin Mary"

The Life of the Virgin, showing narrative scenes from the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a common subject for pictorial cycles in Christian art, often complementing, or forming part of, a cycle on the Life of Christ. In both cases the number of scenes shown varies greatly with the space available. Works may be in any medium: frescoed church walls and series of old master prints have many of the fullest cycles, but panel painting, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, stone sculptures and ivory carvings have many examples.

Antwerp Mannerism refers to the style of a group of largely anonymous painters active in the southern Netherlands, principally in Antwerp, in roughly the first three decades of the 16th century. The movement marks the tail end of Early Netherlandish painting and an early phase within Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. The style bore no relation to Italian Mannerism, which it mostly predates by a few years, but the name suggests that it was a reaction to the "classic" style of the earlier Flemish painters, just as the Italian Mannerists were reacting to, or trying to go beyond, the classicism of High Renaissance art.

The Antwerp Mannerists' style is certainly "mannered", and "characterized by an artificial elegance. Their paintings typically feature elongated figures posed in affected, twisting, postures, colorful ornate costumes, fluttering drapery, Italianate architecture decorated with grotesque ornament, and crowded groups of figures...". Joseph Koerner notes "a diffuse sense of outlandishness in Antwerp art, of an exoticism both of subject and means ... evoking a non-localized elsewhere".