Not mentioned in the Bible, St. Anne is a created figure whose importance in late medieval Christianity grew. As histories about the Life of the Virgin before the Annunciation were disseminated in apocrypha, poetry, and folk tales—the most notable being the Protoevangelium of St. James (mid-second century CE) and the Legenda Aurea (1265-66)—the cult of St. Anne was integrated to varying degrees into the much more widespread cult of the Virgin Mary. Regarding pictorial representations of the two, this compiled volume opens with the question, “How does the daughter connect to her mother and the mother to the daughter in images?” The question is dealt with in the volume’s eight chapters, each addressing “the iconographic flexibility and permeability between visual representations of the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne” (15).
In the first chapter, Nino Chichinadze addresses an image of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Church of Archangels in Iprari, Georgia. An accompanying inscription dates the wall painting (which is referred to throughout the chapter as a “panel”) to 1096 and informs viewers that it was painted by Tevdore, the King’s Painter. Having no parallels in contemporary Byzantine art, Chichinadze meticulously analyzes the incorporation of St. Anne and the cultural context of the murals, arguing that the scene elucidates the Chalcedonian dogma and reflects the emergence of apocryphal texts in the region while possibly demonstrating links between the Byzantine cult of the Kyriotissa (an imperial icon) and St. Anne. In addition to religious meanings, the scene could also promote royal ideology and mirror the biblical ancestry of the Georgian dynasty of the Bagrationi and King Davit IV. In the following chapter, Mihnea Alexandru Mihail also addresses one motif within a cycle of wall paintings, namely the Holy Kinship in the parish church of Csaroda in Hungary, dated to 1300-1330. As this is an unprecedented iconography in the region, Mihail surveys the cult and pictorial tradition for the Holy Kinship in France and some of its adaptations in Angevin Hungary but finds no ties between the Hungarian nobility and the parish church of Csaroda. While the examples he discusses demonstrate visual parallels to the Csaroda scene in French illuminations, the chapter concludes somewhat open-endedly. In Chapter 3, Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky outlines how images of the pregnant Anne rely on representations of the pregnant Virgin, as there are no textual sources for the former. Moreover, the many references to female beauty and virtue from the Song of Songs, applied to the Virgin, were eventually used to characterize St. Anne. The chapter has a curious structure, as the Marian material is discussed after the many examples of St. Anne, complicating the reading, particularly regarding what the author refers to as the “chromatic association” involving the Virgin’s blue dress that is re-used in representations of St. Anne. It is also peculiar that there are no illustrations of the illuminations more thoroughly discussed, i.e., PML MS. 359 and PML MS. 399. This chapter is the only one that applies the word “permeability” in reference to the overlap and influence between representations of the two saints.
Chapter 4 is a gem. Elliot Wise presents a thorough assessment of the Priesthood of the Virgin, painted by the Master of the Collins Hours in 1438. Admittedly, unlike Mihail, Wise can build on a body of previous research, yet the depth of his analyses of the unprecedented iconography offers new insights into the controversies over the Virgo Sacerdos and into St. Anne and a matriarchal priesthood, as well as the role of the commissioner of the painting, i.e., the textile tradesman Jean du Bos, which goes beyond all previous scholarship on the painting. Wise’s tour de force is followed by Fiametta Campagnoli’s interesting chapter on Maria ante saecula, the presence of the Virgin in God’s mind before creation. Looking at various iconographical solutions to this concept in paintings from seventeenth-century Piacenza, Campagnoli argues that St. Anne becomes increasingly prominent, to the extent that she may be mistaken for the Virgin in Pordenone’s 1528 altarpiece now in the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples; and that St. Anne’s womb is where predictions are fulfilled. In Chapter 6, Stefanie Paulmichl examines the spread and reception of representations of Anna Selbdritt and the Holy Kinship in a region close to this core area, namely historical Tyrol in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The “rise” of St. Anne corresponds to the incorporation of the region into the Habsburg dynasty; however, German artists toward the end of the period either abandoned or relegated St. Anne to the margins. In Chapter 7, Eirini Panou discusses the Venetian influences (including elements from Flemish engravings) on art produced in the Ionian Islands alongside the Byzantine pictorial tradition. The latter was largely preserved in paintings of the Presentation in the Temple and the Nativity, due to theological reasons as well as the placement of the motifs within sacred space. In the last chapter of the book, Letícia Martins de Andrade examines a small early-eighteenth-century sculpture with singular iconography, St. Anne of the Apple Tree. Through a rich exposé on how fruits and trees were elaborated in Portuguese (and European) religious texts before being linked more concretely to the Brazilian world—where apples were not known, and the Virgin would be compared to an ananas as Anna nascitur—she offers a wide semantic range of interpretations that may enhance our understanding of the sculpture.
Brepols’s “Women of the Past” is a relatively new series aiming to foster an interdisciplinary and cross-chronological framework, and this volume certainly touches on that goal with its diverse case studies. The combination of geographical perspectives from Georgia, Hungary, France, Italy, Tyrol, the Ionian Islands, and Brazil offers a fascinating read and aligns with the currents of global art history and scholarship on objects in motion.
There are, however, some infelicities. The structure could have benefited from more careful consideration, as chronology does not appear to be the best way to organize this material. The title of the book does not reveal the geographical areas covered, but in the introduction, it is repeatedly noted that the chapters “further expand the geographic boundaries of previous scholarly investigation” and that they consider representations of the two saints in “less studied geographic areas” (15), which seems to encompass all areas except for the German and Dutch-speaking parts of Europe. However, there are no cues regarding how the chapters were collected—whether through an open call or as proceedings, or if they are responses to targeted invitations—or any reflections on why other less studied areas like Scandinavia, Finland, or other parts of Eastern Europe are not included. The fact that the essays vary in length 14 to 26 pages and feature between 1 to 15 illustrations significantly affects the depth of discussion and analysis in some chapters.
Most importantly, the volume would have benefited from a more thorough introduction, providing a more comprehensive cultural and historical survey of the theme than what Znorovszky offers. As it stands, it reads merely as an incomplete research history—there are not even references to the scholarship that is mentioned—and a summary of the eight chapters. The conclusion likewise does little more than briefly reiterate the information presented in the introduction. This is unfortunate, as the introduction emphasized that these chapters were intended to expand both chronological and geographical boundaries; yet it is difficult to achieve this with such a binary approach when one pole has not been thoroughly explained. Additionally, there is no attempt, either in the introduction or the conclusion, to identify common ideas or developments across the chapters. There are many potential connections—for example, Elizabeth’s gaze towards the Virgin’s conspicuous clasp in Ghirlandaio’sVisitation and the discussion of the breastplate of the sacerdotal vestment of the Virgin in Wise’s chapter; the relationship between poetry and imagery, which is addressed by both Wise and Martins de Andrade; and the notion of St. Anne’s more marginal position, commented upon by both Paulmichl and Martins de Andrade. While the four appendices are helpful, they are also inadequate; apart from Appendix 1, they would have served the reader better if placed at the beginning of the book.
As it stands, the book is a collection of eight interesting case studies, but it fails to bridge the gap between the cult of the Virgin and St. Anne and its earlier manifestations, as promised to the reader in the introduction. Fortunately, the editor assures in the conclusion that the contributions demonstrate that research on Mariology “has not reached an end”—which would be very worrying indeed if it had.