The Virgin Education. Carved stone group, East of France before 1550

Carved limestone group.
St. Anne and the Virgin Mary each hold the book with one hand as if to share the weight of knowledge. Mother and daughter come together around the source of knowledge. Sainte-Anne is here the mother who teaches, the mother who transmits, symbol of ecclesial guidance. This theme is very popular since the end of the Middle Ages and really takes off in the Renaissance. This iconography is widespread in the great East of France. The carved groups of the churches of Saint-Pierre at Bar-sur-Aube, Saint-André at Saint-André-les-Vergers near Troyes, Saint-Alban at Charmont-sous-Barbuise in the Aube, Charmes-la-Côte near Nancy or the collegiate Saint-Hippolyte in Poligny in the Jura.

But Sainte-Anne is above all a mother, and her left hand gently placed in the back of Mary is a protective gesture filled with maternal tenderness.

The refined style of our sculpted group is a reflection of French Renaissance sculpture: slender silhouettes, Angevin faces, narrow waist of St. Anne, long hair of Mary undulating on his shoulders.

The back is barely outlined because it is a statuary that was housed in a niche. Traces of polychromy.