Saint Anne carrying the Virgin and Child

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen's Saint Anne Carrying the Virgin and Child presents the unusual iconographic type showing the grandmother of Christ bearing both her daughter Mary and her divine grandson, an image expressing the trinitarian family of salvation history. Van Oostsanen, Amsterdam's first significant painter, developed the workshop tradition in that northern Netherlandish city before the great commercial expansion that would make Amsterdam dominant. This image of familial continuity across three sacred generations appealed to the devotional culture of northern Netherlandish towns where confraternities dedicated to Saint Anne were particularly active.

The devotional composition is rendered with attention to the expressive and contemplative qualities that served the painting's function as an aid to prayer and meditation.