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.
Names for this particular subject in other languages include:
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]
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]
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]
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]
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.
The Gospel of James is a second-century infancy gospel telling of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, and events immediately following. It is the earliest surviving assertion of the perpetual virginity of Mary, meaning her virginity not just prior to the birth of Jesus, but during and afterwards, and despite being condemned by Pope Innocent I in 405 and rejected by the Gelasian Decree around 500, became a widely influential source for Mariology.
The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Debated by medieval theologians, it was not defined as a dogma until 1854, by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus. While the Immaculate Conception asserts Mary's freedom from original sin, the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, had previously affirmed her freedom from personal sin.
Masaccio, born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortenings in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.
In art, a Madonna is a representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is from Italian ma donna 'my lady' (archaic). The Madonna and Child type is very prevalent in Christian iconography, divided into many traditional subtypes especially in Eastern Orthodox iconography, often known after the location of a notable icon of the type, such as the Theotokos of Vladimir, Agiosoritissa, Blachernitissa, etc., or descriptive of the depicted posture, as in Hodegetria, Eleusa, etc.
According to Christian apocryphal and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, the wife of Joachim and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come only from New Testament apocrypha, of which the Gospel of James seems to be the earliest that mentions them. The mother of Mary is mentioned but not named in the Quran.
The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph. The subject became popular in art from the 1490s on, but veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th century by Saint François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, who founded a confraternity.
The Madonna and Child with St. Anne or Madonna and the Serpent, is one of the mature religious works of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted in 1605–1606, for the altar of the Archconfraternity of the Papal Grooms in the Basilica of Saint Peter and taking its theme from Genesis 3:15. The painting was briefly exhibited in the parish church for the Vatican, Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri, before its removal, due to its unorthodox portrayal of the Virgin Mary. There are a lot of reasons why the piece may have been removed, such as the nudity of the child Jesus and the Virgin Mary revealing too much of her breast. The reputation of the model that Caravaggio used to portray the Virgin Mary could be another reason as to why this altarpiece was withdrawn. The altarpiece was sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese and now hangs in his palazzo.
Mary, the mother of Jesus in Christianity, is known by many different titles, epithets, invocations, and several names associated with places.
Mariology is the theological study of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mariology seeks to relate doctrine or dogma about Mary to other doctrines of the faith, such as those concerning Jesus and notions about redemption, intercession and grace. Christian Mariology aims to place the role of the historic Mary in the context of scripture, tradition and the teachings of the Church on Mary. In terms of social history, Mariology may be broadly defined as the study of devotion to and thinking about Mary throughout the history of Christianity.
The history of Catholic Mariology traces theological developments and views regarding Mary from the early Church to the 21st century. Mariology is a mainly Catholic ecclesiological study within theology, which centers on the relation of Mary, the Mother of God, and the Church. Theologically, it not only deals with her life but with her veneration in life and prayer, in art, music, and architecture, from ancient Christianity to modern times.
Throughout history, Catholic Mariology has been influenced by a number of saints who have attested to the central role of Mary in God's plan of salvation. The analysis of Early Church Fathers continues to be reflected in modern encyclicals. Irenaeus vigorously defended the title of "Theotokos" or Mother of God. The views of Anthony of Padua, Robert Bellarmine and others supported the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, which was declared a dogma in 1850.
The veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church encompasses various devotions which include prayer, pious acts, visual arts, poetry, and music devoted to her. Popes have encouraged it, while also taking steps to reform some manifestations of it. The Holy See has insisted on the importance of distinguishing "true from false devotion, and authentic doctrine from its deformations by excess or defect". There are significantly more titles, feasts, and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than in other Western Christian traditions. The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God.
Mary has been one of the major subjects of Western Art for centuries. There is an enormous quantity of Marian art in the Catholic Church, covering both devotional subjects such as the Virgin and Child and a range of narrative subjects from the Life of the Virgin, often arranged in cycles. Most medieval painters, and from the Reformation to about 1800 most from Catholic countries, have produced works, including old masters such as Michelangelo and Botticelli.
The Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans, is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the Madonna del Latte. It was a common type in painting until the change in atmosphere after the Council of Trent, in which it was rather discouraged by the church, at least in public contexts, on grounds of propriety.
The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Brescia is located on at the west end of Via Elia Capriolo, where it intersects with the Via delle Grazie. Built in the 16th century and remodeled in the 17th century, it still retains much of its artwork by major regional artists, including one of its three canvases by Moretto. The other two are now held at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo. The interior is richly decorated in Baroque fashion. Adjacent to the church is the Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a neo-gothic work.
The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist is a tempera on canvas painting measuring 71 cm by 50.5 cm. It is attributed to Andrea Mantegna, dated to around 1500 and now held in the National Gallery, London. Due to its poor conservation, the autograph is unclear, so some scholars do not directly attribute it to Mantegna. Though, those that do argue its idea and format definitely refer to autographed works by him.
The Pisa Altarpiece was a large multi-paneled altarpiece produced by Masaccio for the chapel of Saint Julian in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The chapel was owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino, who commissioned the work on February 19, 1426 for the sum of 80 florins. Payment for the work was recorded on December 26 of that year. The altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed to various collections and museums in the 18th century, but an attempted reconstruction was made possible due to a detailed description of the work by Vasari in 1568.
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is a subject in Christian art showing Saint Anne with the Virgin Mary and her son Jesus Christ.
Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate is a narrative of the parents of the Virgin Mary, Joachim and Anne meeting at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, upon learning that she will bear a child. It is not in the New Testament, but is in the Protoevangelium of James and other apocryphal accounts; the narrative was tolerated by the church. It features in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c.1260) and other popular accounts. The story is a popular subject in cycles of the Life of the Virgin in art.
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