St. Anne with the Infant Virgin Mary

Abstract

This eighteenth-century painted wood sculpture in the Cappella di Sant'Anna of San Giovanni Maggiore in Naples depicts St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, holding baby Mary. St. Anne was purportedly too old to have a child before she miraculously conceived Mary, and so she is shown here as an old woman with grey hair, though still pink cheeked and smooth skinned, according to period beauty standards. It is uncommon to see a positive portrayal of an older woman. (Older men were honored sages, but older women hags.) This depiction is also unusual in that Anne opens her mouth, showing her teeth, not generally decorous, especially for a woman. Mary is clothed, perhaps because it would be indecorous to show her body, even as an infant. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License