The Education of the Virgin

In 1842 Eugene Delacroix, better known for battle scenes and lions, was a guest at Nohant, the country house of the writer George Sand in central France. There he watched a farmer's wife teaching a small girl her letters, and turned it into this quiet panel. The subject is sacred, Saint Anne teaching the child Mary to read, but the models were from Sand's own household, the farm woman and her daughter, and he painted it for the little church at Nohant. Sand never forgot it. Years later she wrote to him warmly about that beautiful Saint Anne and the sweet little Virgin.