Madonna and Child and Saint Anne

The Madonna and Child and Saint Anne by the Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl, painted around 1487 and now in the Princeton University Art Museum, depicts the three-generational grouping known as the Anna Selbdritt — Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Christ — a subject of particular devotional significance in northern European piety. The cult of Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin, experienced a dramatic surge in the late fifteenth century, producing an enormous demand for images of this sacred family grouping across Germany and the Netherlands. The devotion associated with the Franciscan-promoted Immaculate Conception placed special emphasis on Anne as the vehicle of divine grace, and the Anna Selbdritt image concentrated three generations of sacred lineage in a single devotional composition. The Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl, active in the Middle Rhine region, produced several versions of this subject for the devotional market of the region.

The master arranges the three figures in the traditional Anna Selbdritt grouping, Saint Anne seated and monumental, the Virgin a smaller presence within her mother's embrace, and the Christ child at the visual center of the composition. The Middle Rhine style combines Flemish spatial depth with a more angular, emphatic linearity in the treatment of drapery and features.