Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

Names

Names for this particular subject in other languages include:

• Dutch: Anna te drieën
• French: Anne trinitaire
• German: Anna selbdritt
• Italian: Anna Metterza
• Slovene: Ana Samotretja

Background

In the 13th century, Jacobus de Voragine incorporated apocryphal accounts from the Protoevangelium of James regarding the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary in his Golden Legend. The cult of St. Anne spread rapidly and she became one of the most popular saints of the Latin Church. Saint Anne was recognized as the patroness of grandparents, women in labor, and of miners, Christ being compared to gold, and Mary to silver. Inscriptions on some medieval church bells indicate that Saint Anne was invoked for protection against thunderstorms.

Mother and daughter

The subject of Saint Anne and the Virgin and Child was a popular subject in both painting and sculpture. This was due in part to its universality "—the love and tension between generations and also between humanity and the divine." In the 1500s the theme became popular in Germany (Anna selbdritt) and Italy (Metterza) demonstrating the upcoming emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. St. Anne's motherhood of Mary was viewed as mirroring her daughter's motherhood of Jesus. In 1497, the German Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius, in his De purissima et immaculate conception virginis Marie et de festivitate sancta Annematris eius linked the Immaculate Conception of Mary to the devotion to her mother. While the matter of the Immaculate Conception remained a subject of debate among philosophers and theologians, the depiction of Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate was sometimes interpreted as a symbolic representation of the conception of Mary. Saint Anne was revered as the avia Christi ("grandmother of Christ"), matriarch of the Holy Kinship and exemplary mother.

Iconography

Fourteenth-century images of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child were often modeled on the earlier seat of Wisdom motif. Mary was often shown as a much smaller figure than her mother. As devotion to St. Anne developed 14th century, sometimes a statue of the Madonna and Child was modified to include the additional figure of St. Anne. Anne's traditional colors are green and red, although often she is shown wearing the more sober colors of an older woman.

Byzantine iconography

Eastern depictions of the apocryphal narrative mimic the scriptural account of the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary and take the form of a reclining Agios Joachim beside a double-vesicled fountain or well, implying Mary's perpetual virginity flows from the mystery of her Immaculate Conception in the womb of her mother Agia Anna in linear fashion conform with Eastern creedal statements on the procession of the Holy Spirit. Absent modern meteorology, and therefore the scientific knowledge of how surface water is replenished naturally by atmospheric moisture, the early Christian artist was limited by linear symbolism of gravity known in the topography of the region. Dewfall and the phenomenon of manna in the desert would have been known but revered as ineffable.

Depictions

Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio took up the subject around 1424. Leonardo da Vinci did an oil painting on this theme for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Albrecht Dürer made an oil painting on wood around 1519 on the same subject. The Art Institute of Chicago has a version of Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder who painted the group with the donor and his patron Saint Gereon around 1520.

Around 1606 Caravaggio undertook a commission from the Confraternity of Sant' Anna dei Palafrenieri. He depicted the Virgin and Child treading on the head of the serpent, observed by St. Anne, who was the patron saint of the Palafrenieri.

Gallery

File:Saint Anne with Virgin and Child.jpg|Spanish, c. 1400–1425, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington File:Ignoto del XV secolo Santa Anna Metterza Boccioleto Alpe Seccio.jpg|Santa Anna Metterza, fresco, Oratorio di San Lorenzo all'alpe Seccio, Boccioleto (Piedmont), c. 1450 File:Wehr, Kirche - Anna selbdritt (2014-10-01 869).JPG|Anna selbdritt, Wehr (Eifel) , c. 1450 File:Pöggstall Pfarrkirche Anna Selbdritt 01.JPG|Anna selbdritt, Lower Austria, 1480 File:Lignee-Ste-Anne v1500.jpg|The Line of Saint Anne, Gérard David, c. 1500, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon File:MCC-42227 Anna-te-Drieën (1).tif|Anna-te-Drieën, northern Netherlands, c. 1495–1504, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht File:The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.webp|Hans Holbein the Elder († 1524) File:Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist A29067.jpg|St Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and St John the Baptist, Hans Baldung, c. 1511 File:Santa Ana, el Niño Jesús y la Virgen (Benson).jpg|Ambrosius Benson, c. 1525–1550, from the Convent of Santa Cruz la Real, Segovia, Prado, Madrid File:Virgin and Child with Saint Anne MET DP280846.jpg|Albrecht Dürer, Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, probably 1519, MET, New York File:Leonardo da Vinci - Virgin and Child with St Anne C2RMF retouched.jpg|Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished interpretation, c. 1503–1519, Louvre, Paris File:Anna-Altar Orsanmichele Florenz-03.jpg|St. Anne altar with the Metterza by Francesco da Sangallo, c. 1526, Orsanmichele, Florence File:Caravaggio - La Madonna dei Palafrenieri, 1605, 110.jpg|Caravaggio, La Madonna dei Palafrenieri, 1605

References

References

1. Tinagli, Paola. 1997. ''Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity.'' Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 159.
2. Kahsnitz, Rainer. 2005. ''Carved Splendor: Late Gothic Altarpieces in Southern Germany, Austria and South Tyrol.'' Los Angeles: Getty Publications, p. 442.
3. Rowlands, Eliot Wooldridge. 2003. ''Masaccio: Saint Andrew and the Pisa Altarpiece.'' Los Angeles: Getty Publications, p. 22.
4. Feigenbaum, Gail, & Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, eds. 2011. ''Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Religious Art, 1500–1900.'' Los Angeles: Getty Publications, p. 40.
5. (2012-11-11). "Saint Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary". The American University of Greece (AUG).
6. Dresen-Coenders, Lène, et al. 1987. ''Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the 15th and 16th Centuries.'' London: Rubicon Press, p. 87.
7. Murray, Peter et al. 2013. ''The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 21.
8. Crăciun, Maria, & Elaine Fulton. 2011. ''Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–1800.'' Farnham, UK: Ashgate, p. 50.
9. Jaki, Barbara. 2004. ''National Gallery of Slovenia: Guide to the Permanent Collection: Painting and Sculpture in Slovenia from 13th to the 20th Century.'' Ljubljana: National Gallery of Slovenia, p. 9.
10. [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01538a.htm Holweck, Frederick. "St. Anne." The Catholic Encyclopedia] Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 29 August 2017
11. 9780271024660.
12. [https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/04/leonardo-da-vincis-saint-anne "It's a Family Affair", ''The Economist''].
13. "Anna selbdritt statue". [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington.
14. 9781134997879.
15. [http://www.ellopos.net/gallery/daphni-gallery/prev.asp?proseuhi-ioakeim-annas.jpg 11th-century mosaic] [[Daphni Monastery]] Greece depicting annunciation to Anna and Joachim)
16. [http://blog-by-the-sea.typepad.com/blog_bythesea/living_water/ Patristic prefigurement] - notes on ancient watercourses in the Holy Land
17. [http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436244 "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne", ''The Met'']
18. [http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/16329 ''Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Gereon, and a Donor'', Art Institute Chicago]
19. [http://www.caravaggio.org/madonna-and-child-with-st-anne.jsp "Madonna and Child with St. Anne", Caravaggio.org.]