Joachim and Anna at the golden gate

Konrad Witz's Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate, painted around 1438 for the Kunstmuseum Basel, depicts the legendary meeting of the Virgin's parents at the Jerusalem gate. This scene, based on apocryphal texts, was central to the cult of Saint Anne that became increasingly popular in Northern Europe during the fifteenth century. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The embrace of the elderly couple is staged before a monumental gate rendered with Witz's characteristic attention to architectural mass and material texture, the figures modeled with his distinctive sculptural weight.