The Holy Kinship

Until 1919 this picture was the back of the portrait of Emperor Maximilian's family that now hangs near it, and both sides were painted at the same time, soon after the Habsburg weddings of 1515. The subject is the Holy Kinship, much loved in German churches around 1500. Medieval legend gave Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin, three husbands and a large family, and Strigel names each relative in Latin: Anne, Joachim, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zacharias and Esmeria. The front of the panel does the same with the Habsburgs, labelling the emperor and his kin as members of this holy family, so the two faces once made one argument. By 1520 the panel probably belonged to Johannes Cuspinian, the humanist diplomat who had helped negotiate those weddings, and he had Strigel paint his own family as a further branch of the Kinship. The small John the Baptist holds a scroll reading Ecce Agnus Dei, behold the Lamb of God.