Joachim and Anne choosing a Lamb for Sacrifice

Hans Fries painted this Joachim and Anne Choosing a Lamb for Sacrifice around 1510, part of his cycle illustrating the life of the Virgin from the apocryphal gospels. Fries was the leading Swiss painter of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, working in Bern and Fribourg for major church commissions. The apocryphal infancy narrative of the Virgin—including the story of her parents Joachim and Anne, their years of childlessness, and the miraculous announcement of Mary's conception—was a popular subject in late medieval and Renaissance painting, providing a biographical context for the Virgin that the canonical gospels do not supply. Fries's narrative panels combine precise figure work with carefully observed architectural and landscape details that ground the biblical narrative in concrete physical reality.

The panel shows Fries's characteristic Swiss style with vivid narrative detail, strong color, and the blend of German precision with French decorative sensibility that marked Fribourg painting.