Madonna and Child with St. Anne
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Authors
Unknown sculptor
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Madonna , Jesus , Baby , Mary , St. Anne , Holy Family
Alternative Title
Abstract
This painted and gilded wood sculpture depicts a kind of family tree: the Virgin Mary seated, holding Baby Jesus, while her mother, St. Anne, stands behind her, holding a book. The almost diagrammatic arrangement of the figures is enlivened by the slightly twisting poses of each, including the baby, who stands precociously in contrapposto. Also adding to the realism is the richly abundant crinkling fabric that envelopes both women and cascades over their forms. St. Anne was unusually old when she miraculously conceived Mary, according to the stories told in the Renaissance, and so she should have been at quite an advanced when her grandson was born, but here she looks, if slightly older than Mary perhaps, given the angle of her jaw, nevertheless hardly elderly, standing strong with no wrinkles, instead full, plump cheeks. Elderly men, in this society, were revered, but older women were often mocked or seen as degraded, and so to honour St. Anne, she is shown younger but also even more modestly covered than Mary, as perhaps a way to suggest the distinction without denigrating the saint. Showing St. Anne with a book and her lips perhaps slightly parted could evoke scenes in which Anne educates the Virgin Mary as a child. On the basis of style, scholars have suggested that the sculptor could be from Lombardy or Germany, or possibly be a more local artist who was imitating northern styles of carving. Certainly northern Italian and German sculptors worked in southern Italy in this period, which was a very cosmopolitan society. These photographs were taken when the work was in an exhibition at the Palazzo Lanfranchi in Matera in 2019. Currently housed in Santa Maria Assunta in Stigliano, the sculpture was in Sant'Anna in Stigliano (founded 1515) until the eighteenth century. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Santa Maria Assunta, Stigliano; Sant'Anna, Stigliano
Citation
Dora Catalano, Matteo Ceriana, Pierluigi Leone de Castris, and Marta Ragozzino, Il rinascimento visto dal sud: Materia, l'Italia meridionale e il Mediterraneo tra '400 e '500, exh. cat. (Matera: Palazzo Lanfranchi, 2019), cat. 5.16 p. 364.