Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne^[1]^[2] or Madonna and Child with Saint Anne^[3]^[4] is a subject in Christian art showing Saint Anne with her daughter, the Virgin Mary, and her grandson Jesus.^[5] This depiction has been popular in Germany and neighboring countries since the 14th century.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Even in the Renaissance, drawings were sometimes works of art unto themselves. They weren't always preparatory. And we think that's the case with the large scale drawing by Leonardo that is usually given the title of the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John. And that's because it's not perforated. SPEAKER 2: Right Although it's unfinished. So it's status is a little bit unclear. And it would have had tiny dots or perforations in it so that that would have allowed Leonardo to trace the outlines of the figures so that you could transfer a drawing to a panel or a wall to paint on. SPEAKER 1: Although using Leonardo's technique is so different from traditional, much more linear Renaissance painting that that would be more problematic. You get the basic contours. But his construction of the figure is so often simply using chiaroscuro, or using light and shadow. SPEAKER 2: Sfumato. SPEAKER 1: Well, that's because it's so soft and because it's so smoky. That idea of just the line that would be traced by the perforations seems sort of absurd. SPEAKER 2: Right. Yeah. He was much more interested in these, very slow gradations from dark to light and then moving back into dark again. So that is such a sense of three dimensionality and monumentality to these figures. SPEAKER 1: And also an integration of the figures into a whole. The figures form a kind of pyramid. They are so stable. And that's one of the characteristics about Renaissance. SPEAKER 2: That stability that would suggest that kind of eternity that is appropriate for the subject of these divine figures, so, go ahead. Did you want to say something? SPEAKER 1: Well, just wanted to say that it is such an interesting contrast. Because on the one hand, you've got the sense of an ideal perfection. This notion of the eternal, and sort of the eternally spiritual. On the other hand, there's such a kind of intimacy between figures, between Anne and Mary, and between John and Christ. SPEAKER 2: That's very human. SPEAKER 1: That's incredibly human and seems incredibly precious. And so sort of at odds with the notion of the eternal. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. It's both. That's what Leonardo does, right? He combines the human and the divine. That's the definition to me of what Leonardo accomplished in High Renaissance. SPEAKER 1: There are all these marvelous passages here. I mean, I just love the way that Anne turns to Mary, who sits on her lap. There's this kind of rhythm of needs of the two women, right? SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: Down, and up and down, and up again. It's almost musical as it moves across. SPEAKER 2: It makes me feel that Leonardo is certainly looking at classical sculpture. Because that so much looks to me like drapery on ancient Greek and Roman figures. SPEAKER 1: There is a sense of the varied age of the figures. And you get a real sense of Leonardo's process, especially when you look at the contrast between Anne's face and her hand, which is so much less finished and still so much more linear. SPEAKER 2: And Anne is pointing up to communicate this idea that this is part of God's plan, that Christ and his future sacrifice is part of God's plan for the salvation of mankind. SPEAKER 1: Look at the way in which Christ's arm bends around and his finger's up in blessing John. Actually it's continued upward by Anne's fingers. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: So that's one continuous movement. In a sense Christ is literally drawn up in Anne's gesture. SPEAKER 2: Well, and that begins with the line from Mary's shoulder up through Christ and then pointing up to God. SPEAKER 1: In fact, you could actually begin that movement with Anne's glance at-- SPEAKER 2: Right. SPEAKER 1: Mary continuing down her shoulders, as you said, around her elbow, and then up through Christ's arm SPEAKER 2: And actually what we just did is a really good example of what was so important to Leonardo, which is that unification. Like, you can start linking things together the longer you look at the image. I mean, we can look at St. John's glance up at Christ and then move up there to Mary's looking at the Christ child. And then go back to Anne, whose looking at Mary. SPEAKER 1: That's right. And it really does create a pathway for her eyes. But all of which lead toward Heaven, which is, of course, the very point of the drawing. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Names

Names for this particular subject in other languages include:

Dutch: Anna te Drieën^[6]
French: Anne Trinitaire^[7]
German: Anna Selbdritt^[8]
Italian: Anna Metterza^[1]^[7]
Slovene: Ana Samotretja^[9]

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.^[10] Inscriptions on some medieval church bells indicate that Saint Anne was invoked for protection against thunderstorms.^[11]

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."^[12] The Anna Selbdritt style, popular in northern Germany in the 1500s, demonstrates the medieval focus on the humanity of Jesus.^[13] St. Anne's motherhood of Mary was viewed as mirroring Mary motherhood of Jesus.^[14] 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 between 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.^[14]

Iconography

Fourteenth-century images of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child were often modeled on the earlier seat of Wisdom motif.^[15] Mary was often shown as a much smaller figure than her mother.^[16] 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.^[14] Anne's traditional colors are green and red, although often she is shown wearing the more sober colors of an older woman.^[17]

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.^[18] Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder painted Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Gereon, and a Donor c. 1520.^[19]

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.^[20]

Gallery

Virgin and Child with St Anne, Leonardo da Vinci, c.1503
Anna Selbdritt, Egenburg
Anna selbdritt in Wehr around 1450
Anna Selbdritt, Lower Austria 1480
Anna-te-Drieën, Netherlands, c.1495
Santa Ana, el Niño Jesús y la Virgen (Benson), c.1495
Virgin and Child with St. Anne, Cornelis Engebrechtsz, c.1500
St Anne with Christ Child, the Virgin, and St John the Baptist, Baldung c.1511

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,^[21] 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.^[22] Dewfall and the phenomenon of manna in the desert would have been known but revered as ineffable.

References

^ ^a ^b Tinagli, Paola. 1997. Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 159.
^ Kahsnitz, Rainer. 2005. Carved Splendor: Late Gothic Altarpieces in Southern Germany, Austria and South Tyrol. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, p. 442.
^ Rowlands, Eliot Wooldridge. 2003. Masaccio: Saint Andrew and the Pisa Altarpiece. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, p. 22.
^ Feigenbaum, Gail, & Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, eds. 2011. Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Religious Art, 1500–1900. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, p. 40.
^ Sources of Christian Iconography incl. Protevangelium of James. the Golden Legend (131) and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
^ Dresen-Coenders, Lène et al. 1987. Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the 15th and 16th Centuries. London: Rubicon Press, p. 87.
^ ^a ^b Murray, Peter et al. 2013. The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 21.
^ Crăciun, Maria, & Elaine Fulton. 2011. Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–1800. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, p. 50.
^ 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.
^ Holweck, Frederick. "St. Anne." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 29 August 2017
^ Nixon, Virginia. Mary's Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe, Penn State Press, 2004, p.133, ISBN 9780271024660
^ "It's a Family Affair", The Economist
^ "Anna Selbdritt Statue", Diocese of Lexington
^ ^a ^b ^c Welsh, Jennifer. "The Cult of St. Anne in Medieval and Early Modern Europe", Routledge, 2016, ISBN 9781134997879
^ Nixon, p.134.
^ Nixon, p.114.
^ Nixon, p.148.
^ "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne", The Met
^ Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Gereon, and a Donor, Art Institute Chicago
^ "Madonna and Child with St. Anne", Caravaggio.org.
^ 11th-century mosaic Daphni monastery Greece depicting annunciation to Anna and Joachim)
^ Patristic prefigurement - notes on ancient watercourses in the Holy Land