Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist

c. 1511

Hans Baldung Grien

Artist, German, 1484/1485 - 1545

An older woman sitting in a tall, wooden, throne-like chair, holding a seated baby in her lap, is flanked by a bearded man to our left and a young girl to our right in this vertical painting. All the people have pale or rosy skin and flat, plate-like halos, three of which are inscribed with names. The bearded man’s halo reads, “S IOHANE.” The older woman’s is “S ANNA,” and the young girl’s reads, “MARIA.” The throne takes up the right half of the composition. The face of the older woman, Saint Anne, is deeply creased, and she has jowls along her jawline and bags under her eyes. With a smile, she looks down at the baby in her lap. She wears a dark brown robe with a cream-white wimple that covers her hair and neck and cascades down her shoulders. A long, scarlet-red cloak drapes from her right shoulder, to our left, and across her lap. With that arm, she supports the seated baby, Jesus. The chubby baby is nude except for a silvery-white cloth gathered around his hips, and he faces our right, looking at the young woman there, Mary. He holds one hand up by his chest and, with the other, reaches for and grips a small, dark red apple Mary holds. Both Jesus and Mary have blond hair, rounded cheeks and jawlines, and full, rose-red lips. Mary’s long, wavy hair falls loosely to her waist. She holds out the apple with one hand and, with the other, picks up the skirt of her moss-green dress to reveal a powder-blue skirt beneath. One of Saint Anne’s large hands wraps around Mary’s lower back. The bearded man, Saint John, kneels on the other side of the throne, facing Mary. He looks at her with dark eyes under a gathered brow. Wrinkles line his cheeks, forehead, and the corners of his eyes. He points with his right hand, closer to us, at Jesus and gestures down at a white lamb, also with a halo, at his knees with the other. He has a cap of light brown, curly hair and a full beard. He wears a mustard-brown robe rolled back to the elbows. Behind the chair, a black wall has two steps down to span the background behind Saint John’s head. There is a white column on each step, and a landscape beyond has a river, trees, and a town nestled on craggy cliffs in the distance. The sky above is pale blue. With tiny letters, the artist signed the painting with his initials intertwined, “HBG,” on the throne between Saint Anne and Mary.

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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.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/german-painting-fifteenth-through-seventeenth-centuries.pdf

On View

NGA, West Building, M-035-A

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on hardboard transferred from panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface: 87 x 75 cm (34 1/4 x 29 1/2 in.)
    support: 89 x 77.6 cm (35 1/16 x 30 9/16 in.)
    framed: 110.5 x 100 x 7 cm (43 1/2 x 39 3/8 x 2 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.62

Artwork history & notes

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;[4] 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.
[4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1793.

Associated Names

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).

2017

  • The Master of the Messkirch: Catholic Splendour during the Reformation, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 2017-2018.

2019

  • Hans Baldung Grien, Heilig / Unheilig, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 2019 - 2020, no. 43, repro.

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 Collection 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

  • Möhle, Hans. "Hans Baldung Grien: zur Karlsruher Baldung-Ausstellung, Sommer 1959." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 22 no. 2 (1959): 128.

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 302, repro.

1960

  • Weihrauch, Hans R. "Berichte. Deutschland." Pantheon 18 (1960): 46.

  • 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.

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

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 3, 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 35, repro.

  • Borries, J.E. von. Review of Hans Baldung Grien, Gemälde und Dokumente. In The Burlington Magazine 127, no. 983 (February 1985): 97-98.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 63, repro.

  • 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.

  • 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.

2013

  • Ainsworth, Maryan W. and Joshua P. Waterman. German Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2013: under no. 2; 20, 22, color fig. 18, 280, nt. 4.

  • Silver, Larry. Review of Ainsworth, Maryan W. and Joshua P. Waterman, German Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2013). In _ Historians of Netherlandish Art Newsletter_ 30, no. 2 (November 2013): 52.

Inscriptions

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

Wikidata ID

Q20175259

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