The Main Retable at Oviedo Cathedral: Detail, the Presentation in the Temple
1512-31
Cathedral of St. Savior, Oviedo, Spain
This image is unlike most Presentation images in that it is the high priest who receives the child, not Simeon. The child is on a draped altar, a reference to the Eucharist common in this iconographical type.
The man behind the high priest could be Simeon, or perhaps St. Joseph. The two men in the background are surely not Joseph or Simeon but attending clerics. They are both tonsured. The one on the right wears some sort of liturgical garment, and the one on the left recites from a prayer book.
Mary kneels at the altar in her customary blue mantle. Behind her the doves are carried in by the young woman often seen in Presentation images.
View this image in full resolution.
View the entire retable.
Read more about The Presentation in the Temple.
Photographed at the cathedral by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.