Virgin with Child and Saint Anne

Three generations appear together here: the aged Saint Anne, her daughter Mary, and the infant Christ. The German name for this grouping is Anna Selbdritt, Anne as one of three. Baldung painted it in 1513, at the peak of a fashion that is easy to overlook now. Around 1500 the cult of Saint Anne, grandmother of Christ, was among the most popular devotions in the German-speaking lands, with confraternities founded in her name and new feast days. A young Martin Luther had vowed himself to her during a thunderstorm in 1505, before he entered a monastery. Within a decade of this picture the Reformation would strip such saints from many churches along the Rhine. Baldung keeps the scene close and domestic, grandmother, mother and child gathered together.