National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist
  • Overview
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

Among the outstanding German artists of the period around 1500 was Hans Baldung Grien, a printmaker and painter. He produced book illustrations, devotional woodcuts, stained-glass window designs, portraits, and morality paintings as well as religious panels such as this one.

John the Baptist is here depicted to the left of Jesus. He simultaneously gestures to the lamb at his feet and to the infant, visually alluding to his own description of Christ as "the Lamb of God." The Virgin's mother, Saint Anne, although dressed in a sixteenth-century wimple, wears her traditional robe of red, a symbol of divine love. Garbed in green, symbolic of rebirth and eternal life, Mary offers Jesus an apple. This fruit, associated with the fall of Adam and Eve, here signifies Mary as the new Eve and Christ as the second Adam.

Baldung Grien's figures are symbolically, rather than realistically, depicted. Mary, for instance, is represented as a very young girl. And, although John and Jesus historically were about the same age, the Baptist is portrayed as an adult to emphasize his prophetic message. The painting was discovered in a small village church in Alsace, an area where the artist spent most of his life.

Inscription

center right on base of middle pillar of throne, in monogram: HBG; on halos, left to right: S.IOHANE; S.ANNA.; .MARIA.

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

Church of the Order of Saint John in Jerusalem, Grünen Wörth, near Strasbourg, c. 1511 until probably c. 1633, and later in the Order's church in the cloister of Saint Marx, Strasbourg, probably c. 1687 until at least 1741.[1] Village church, Alsace; acquired shortly after 1870 by Dr. Georges-Joseph Wimpfen [d. 1879], Colmar; by inheritance to his daughter, Marie Emélie Jeanne Siben [d. 1951], Paris and Zimmerbach, near Colmar.[2] (Fritz Frankhausen, Basel), 1952;[3] (Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York), by 1953; purchased 1953 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1961 to NGA.

[1] Gert von der Osten. "Ein Altar des Hans Baldung Grien aus dem Jahre 1511 -- und eine Frage nach verschollenen Werken des Malers." Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 31 (1977), 52-53, cites two sets of documents. The first, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin, Strasbourg, no. H2158, are records of payment in the accounts of the Order of Saint John, under the heading, "Uff die Kirch": "It. X G(ulden) meister Hans baldung dem maler vff die tafel zu malen. It. XIIII G(ulden) meister Hans baldung dem maler von dem fur altar zu malen." The second, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin, Strasbourg, no. H2232, is the 1741 manuscript by "F. Francisco Josepho Ignatio Goetzman, Ermelten Hausses Custode,"Inventarium über Alle des Ritterlichen St. Johann Ordens Hauses in Strassburg Custorey-oder Kirchen Schatz, page 149, no. 26: "Item Ein gleiche, worauf S. Anna B. V. und S. Johannes Bapt. pelle indutus in erwaxenem alter, auch in der Sacristy ober dem Kirchfass." The second inventory (1741) describes three separate paintings as hanging in the sacristy of the church and these can be convincingly identified with The Mass of Saint Gregory (Cleveland Museum of Art), the Saint John on Patmos (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and the Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist (NGA). These three paintings were originally part of a larger alterpiece, which was probably dismantled in the 1630's, during the disruption at Grünen Wörth. It needs to be pointed out that during the Thirty Years' War the order at Strasbourg lost its buildings and in 1633 the church in Grünen Wörth was pulled down, and its contents apparently put in storage. In 1687 the order moved into the cloister of Saint Marx in Strasbourg where it remained until the French Revolution.

[2] François-Georges Pariset. "Deux Oeuvres inédites de Baldung Grien." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6e per. 11 (1934), 13-14; Christian Heck, Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar, letter of 10 June 1985 to Guy Bauman, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, copy in NGA curatorial files, is the source for full names and death dates.

[3] Gert von der Osten. Hans Baldung Grien. Gemälde und Dokumente. (Berlin, 1983), 68; memorandum by Guy Bauman in NGA curatorial files, of telephone conversation, 3 June 1985, with Gerald Stiebel.

Exhibition History

1956
German Drawings: Masterpieces from Five Centuries, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (last venue of four, travelling exhibition circulated by Smithsonian Institution), San Francisco, 1956, not in cat.
1959
Hans Baldung Grien, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, 1959, no. 14.
1986
Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg 1400-1550, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 1986, no. 179c (shown only in New York).

Bibliography

1934
Pariset, François-Georges. "Deux Oeuvres inédites de Baldung Grien." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6è per., 11 (1934): 13-23.
1941
Perseke, Helmut. Hans Baldungs Schaffen in Freiburg. Freiburg i. Br., 1941: 49-50, 66-67, fig. 8.
1943
Fischer, Otto. Hans Baldung Grien. Munich, 1943: 9, 20.
1953
Koch, Carl. "Katalog der erhaltenen Gemälde, der Einblattholzschnitte und illustrierten Bücher von Hans Baldung-Grien." Kunstchronik 6 (1953): 297.
1956
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Colllection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 26, no. 5, repro.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 302, repro.
1959
Möhle, Hans. "Hans Baldung Grien: zur Karlsruher Baldung-Ausstellung, Sommer 1959." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 22 no. 2 (1959): 128.
1960
Broadley Hugh T. German Painting in the National Gallery of Art (Booklet no. 9 in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). Washington, 1960: 8, 32-33, color repro.
1960
Weihrauch, Hans R. "Berichte. Deutschland." Pantheon 18 (1960): 46.
1963
Oettinger, Karl and Karl-Adolf Knappe. Hans Baldung Grien und Albrecht Dürer in Nürnberg. Nuremberg, 1963: 105, nt. 247.
1964
Tolzien, Gerd. "Baldung, Hans, genannt Grien." In Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, edited by Germain Bazin, et al. 6 vols. Zürich, 1964-1971. Zürich, 1964: 1:188.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 9
1967
Fritz, Rolf. Sammlung Becker, I: Gemälde alter Meister. Dortmund, 1967: unpaginated, under no. 1.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Companion to the Summary Catalogue, 1965). Washington, 1968: 3, no. 1614, repro.
1974
Koch, Robert A. Hans Baldung Grien: Eve, the Serpent, and Death. (Masterpieces in the National Gallery of Canada, no. 2.) Ottawa, 1974: 7.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 16, repro. 17.
1975
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 151, no. 164, repro.
1977
Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 29-30, fig. 32.
1977
Osten, Gert von der. "Ein Altar des Hans Baldung Grien aus dem Jahre 1511--und eine Frage nach verschollenen Werken des Malers." Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 31 (1977): 51-61, figs. 4, 6, 8.
1979
Pariset, François-Georges. "Réflexions à propos de Hans Baldung Grien." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6è pér., 94 (1979): 2.
1981
Marrow, James H. and Alan Shestack. Hans Baldung Grien. Prints & Drawings. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1981. New Haven, 1981: 125, 129, 221-222, fig. 56a.
1982
Cassill, Jean Kubota. European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries: The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part Three. Cleveland, 1982: 161-162, under no. 65.
1983
Osten, Gert von der. Hans Baldung Grien. Gemälde und Dokumente. Berlin, 1983: 21, 66-69, no. 12a, 71-74, pls. 32, 34-35.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. Washington, 1984: 151, no. 158, color repro.
1985
Borries, J.E. von. Review of Hans Baldung Grien, Gemälde und Dokumente. In The Burlington Magazine 127, no. 983 (February 1985): 97-98.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 35, repro.
1992
Heck, Christian. “Baldung Grien’s Grünen Wörth Altarpiece and Devotion to the Two St. Johns.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal 27 (1992): 85-99, fig. 1 and 2.
1992
National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 63, repro.
1992
Mende, Matthias. "Baldung Grien, Hans." In Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. [vols.] Munich and Leipzig, 1992-[unfinished]. Munich and Leipzig, 1992: 6:440.
1993
Hand, John Oliver, with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1993: 13-21, color repro. 17.
1995
Löcher, Kurt. Review of German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, by John Oliver Hand with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. Kunstchronik 48 no. 1 (January 1995): 14.

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