Madonna and Child with St. Anne

Around 1480 the cult of Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin, was spreading fast across northern Europe. Behind it lay a long dispute among theologians over whether Mary herself had been conceived free of original sin, and in the late 1470s Pope Sixtus IV gave the feast of her Immaculate Conception its own Mass. Honouring Anne was a way of honouring that belief. Images like this one show her holding her daughter, who in turn holds the Christ Child, three generations in a single group, a type German speakers call Anna Selbdritt, Anne as one of three. Memling painted it on the outside of a small folding diptych, so it was the face the owner saw whenever the wings were closed. It was later separated from the back of the Saint George panel. The museum notes that it is painted with less ambition than the two inner scenes.