composition and tone are unusually dark and dramatic. The Crucifixion is also an early work and reminiscent of late medieval painting. It has a heavily ornamented gilded background and the smooth flowing quality of the 'soft' Gothic style. The extant works repeatedly address the same scenes and themes. The nativity is recurrent, while several panels depict the Virgin and Child, often surrounded by a chorus of angels, or in earlier panels, blessed by a hovering representation of God or a dove (representing the Holy Ghost). In many instances Mary is enclosed in her usual enclosed garden. Several reveal the work of a number of hands, with weaker and less confident passages attributed to workshop members. The figures of Mary and Gabriel on the reverse of the Dombild were drawn more rapidly and with less skill than the figures on the main panels, and their drapery is modelled with, according to the art historian Julien Chapuis, a certain "stiffness", while the cross hatching "achieves no clear definition of relief". A number of drawings have been associated with him, but only one, a c. 1450 brush and ink on paper entitled Virgin and Child and now in the Musee du Louvre, is attributed with confidence. Illuminated manuscripts Lochner is associated with three surviving books of hours; in Darmstadt, Berlin and Anholt. The extent of his association in each is debated; workshop members were probably heavily involved in their production. The most famous is the early 1450s Prayer book of Stephan Lochner now at Darmstadt; the others are the Berlin Book of Prayers of c. 1444, and the Anholt Prayerbook, completed in the 1450s. The manuscripts are very small (Berlin: 9.3 cm x 7 cm, Darmstadt: 10.7 cm x 8 cm, Anholt: 9 cm x 8 cm) and similar in layout and colourisation and are each extensively decorated in gold and blue. The borders are ornamented in bright colours and contain acanthus scrolls, gold foliage, flowers, berry-like fruits and round pods. The Darmstadt book includes a complete cycle of the Martyrdom of the Apostles. Its illustrations contain Lochner's characteristic application of deep blue, reminiscent of his Virgin in the Rose Garden. The art historian Ingo Walther detects Lochner's hand in the "pious intimacy and soulfulness of the figures, always expressed so gently and elegantly, even in the extremely small format of the pictures". Chapuis agrees with the attribution, noting how many of the