Anne, Saint

   Saint Anne is the mother of the Virgin Mary and wife of Joachim. She miraculously conceived her daughter at an advanced age. The story of Mary's conception is one of the subjects depicted in Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua (1305) and Taddeo Gaddi's Baroncelli Chapel at Santa Croce in Florence (1332-1338). In these frescoes, Anne meets her husband at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem and conceives miraculously when the two embrace. The Birth of the Virgin is also a popular subject in art and usually shows Anne reclining on her bed and midwives attending to the newborn. Examples include Pietro Lorenzetti's Birth of the Virgin (1342; Siena, Museo dell' Opera del Duomo), Vittore Carpaccio's version in the Carrara Gallery in Bergamo (c. 1504), and Simon Vouet's scene (c. 1620) in the Church of San Francesco a Ripa, Rome. Anne often appears at the side of her daughter and the Christ Child, as in Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna and Child with St. Anne (c. 1508-1513) in the Louvre in Paris; in Jacopo da Pontormo's of the same subject (c. 1529) executed for the Convent of St. Anne in Verzaia, just outside Florence (now Paris, Louvre); and in Jusepe de Ribera's Holy Family with Sts. Anne and Catherine of Alexandria (1648) at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.