This engraving of 1503 shows the Virgin Mary, in sixteenth-century dress, sitting on a grassy bank and suckling Christ. Behind her, a bird sits on a fence and a plaque, hanging from a spindly tree, bears the date. In the foreground, Dürer's AD monogram can be seen on a rock. The print is one of a number Dürer made of the Virgin and Child, many of them showing the pair in an enclosed garden, or hortus conclusus. The image of the enclosed garden is associated with the Virgin in the Song of Songs and may refer to the Immaculate Conception, or to her virginity. Here the bounded garden is echoed in the Virgin's pose: she leans over her son and encircles him with her arms. Small-scale prints such as this were used for a number of purposes, among them pasting into books of devotion.