Virgin and Child with Saint Anne

Names for this particular subject in other languages include:

• Dutch: Anna te DrieënDresen-Coenders, Lène et al. 1987. Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the 15th and 16th Centuries. London: Rubicon Press, p. 87.
• French: Anne TrinitaireMurray, Peter et al. 2013. The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 21.
• German: Anna SelbdrittCrăciun, Maria, & Elaine Fulton. 2011. Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–1800. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, p. 50.
• Italian: Anna Metterza
• Slovene: Ana SamotretjaJaki, 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.

File:St Anne (Anna Selbdritt), 1490-1500 AD, ArchbM Olomouc, 152115.jpg

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.[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 Inscriptions on some medieval church bells indicate that Saint Anne was invoked for protection against thunderstorms.[https://books.google.com/books?id=37XJ2IKgPf0C&dq=Anna+Selbdritt&pg=PA152 Nixon, Virginia. Mary's Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe], Penn State Press, 2004, p.133, {{ISBN|9780271024660}}

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."[https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/04/leonardo-da-vincis-saint-anne "It's a Family Affair", The Economist] The Anna Selbdritt style, popular in northern Germany in the 1500s, demonstrates the medieval focus on the humanity of Jesus.[https://cdlex.org/anna-selbdritt-statue "Anna Selbdritt Statue", Diocese of Lexington] St. Anne's motherhood of Mary was viewed as mirroring Mary motherhood of Jesus.[https://books.google.com/books?id=flmuDQAAQBAJ&dq=Anna+Selbdritt&pg=PT58 Welsh, Jennifer. "The Cult of St. Anne in Medieval and Early Modern Europe"], Routledge, 2016, {{ISBN|9781134997879}} 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.

File:Museum M Leuven 07112015 Sedes Sapientiae 1.jpg

Fourteenth-century images of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child were often modeled on the earlier seat of Wisdom motif.{{sfn|Nixon, p.134}} Mary was often shown as a much smaller figure than her mother.{{sfn|Nixon, p.114}} 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.{{sfn|Nixon, p.148}}

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.[http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436244 "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne", The Met] Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder painted Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Gereon, and a Donor c. 1520.[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/16329 Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Gereon, and a Donor, Art Institute Chicago]

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.[http://www.caravaggio.org/madonna-and-child-with-st-anne.jsp "Madonna and Child with St. Anne", Caravaggio.org.]

File:Leonardo da Vinci - Virgin and Child with St Anne C2RMF retouched.jpg|Virgin and Child with St Anne, Leonardo da Vinci, c.1503

File:Egenburg Hauptstr Kirche 017 Hl Anna Selbdritt.jpg|Anna Selbdritt, Egenburg

File:Wehr, Kirche - Anna selbdritt (2014-10-01 869).JPG|Anna selbdritt in Wehr around 1450

File:Pöggstall Pfarrkirche Anna Selbdritt 01.JPG|Anna Selbdritt, Lower Austria 1480

File:MCC-42227 Anna-te-Drieën (1).tif|Anna-te-Drieën, Netherlands, c.1495

File:Santa Ana, el Niño Jesús y la Virgen (Benson).jpg|Santa Ana, el Niño Jesús y la Virgen (Benson), c.1495

File:Cornelis Engebrechtsz. - Virgin and Child with St Anne - WGA7523.jpg|Virgin and Child with St. Anne, Cornelis Engebrechtsz, c.1500

File:Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist A29067.jpg|St Anne with Christ Child, the Virgin, and St John the Baptist, Baldung c.1511

File:Annuciation to Anne.jpg, Istanbul, with Saint Joachim seen reclining at upper-right]] 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,[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) 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.[http://blog-by-the-sea.typepad.com/blog_bythesea/living_water/ Patristic prefigurement] - notes on ancient watercourses in the Holy Land Dewfall and the phenomenon of manna in the desert would have been known but revered as ineffable.

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• Coat of arms of Annaberg-Buchholz in the Saxony's Erzgebirge mountain range
• The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Leonardo), c. 1503
• Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Masaccio), c. 1424
• Studies of an Infant

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• [http://www.biblical-art.com/biblicalsubject.asp?id_biblicalsubject=1047&pagenum=1 Gallery]

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Category:Virgin Mary in art

Category:Saint Anne