English: Miniature altar (portable shrine)

1500-20
Probably Northern Netherlands
Boxwood and silver

Carved boxwood roundels of religious scenes were a Netherlandish speciality of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Many of them acted as pendant beads for rosaries. Within about fifty years of having been carved, the roundel was incorporated into a mount in the form of a 'house-altar'. These were free-standing small images, some portable, which were intended for domestic use in private prayer. The lay couple kneeling at the prayer desks are the original owners of the carving, and the saints presenting them to the Virgin and Child and Saint Anne would have been their patrons, perhaps even their name saints.