The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. The ground layer is light in colour and quite thin. The paint layers were applied smoothly with little visible brushmarking.

Fair. The right join of the panel as seen from the front is open but stable. The joins and a crack running along the entire extent of the right-hand join have been retouched. These retouchings and others in the background have discoloured. The varnish is moderately discoloured. Older varnish residues are also present.

…; collection Jonkheer Ruurd Carel van Cammingha (1822-84), Wiarda State, chapel, Goutum (near Leeuwarden), 1877;¹¹Six 1877. ? sold when Wiarda State was sold before demolition, 1881;…; sale, Van Pappelendam & Schouten, Amsterdam (F. Muller and C.F. Roos), 11 June 1889 sqq., fl. 140, to the dealer Frederik Muller for Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague;²²RANH, ARS, inv. 289, Kop, p. 230, no. 525 (24 June 1889). by whom donated to the museum, 24 June 1889;³³RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 169, no. 95 (22 June 1889); RANH, ARS, inv. 289, Kop, p. 230, no. 525 (24 June 1889); RANH, ARS, inv. 289, Kop, p. 231, no. 526 (25 June 1889). on loan to the Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam, since December 1952

Object number: SK-A-1500

Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague

Also known in English by its German name, Anna Selbdritt, such depictions as the present painting show three generations of the Holy Family. The bunch of grapes Anna offers the Christ Child is a Eucharistic symbol, and refers to Mary as the vine on which the grapes (Christ) grew. The figures are shown in an ordinary domestic interior. The curtain behind Mary, while not seeming out of place, functions as a rather modest cloth of honour. The mirror, with a small broom appended to it, hanging next to the window is probably a reference to Mary’s Immaculate Conception.⁹⁹As pointed out to the author by Pieter van Thiel. In the Litany of Loreto, for example, the Virgin is referred to as the ‘speculum sine macula’ (the mirror without blemish); see Timmers 1947, p. 479; Kirschbaum III, 1971, col. 30.

The notion, first advanced by Hofstede de Groot, that Van Hoogstraten’s painting was influenced by Italian models is incorrect.¹⁰¹⁰Hofstede de Groot in Thieme/Becker XVII, 1924, p. 463. The painting was much more probably based on northern Renaissance depictions of the Virgin and Child or Anna Selbdritt, or both, which are typically situated in domestic interiors. Van Hoogstraten seems to have deliberately given his picture an archaic look. The Virgin’s smoothly modelled features and disproportionately large head recall her depictions in 15th- and 16th-century Flemish painting. The myriad angular drapery folds also puts one in mind of earlier northern art. On the other hand, but perhaps unintentionally, the head of the Christ Child has a Rubensesque quality.

The similarities a number of scholars have seen between Dirk van Hoogstraten’s Virgin and Child with St Anne and his son Samuel’s later, ‘classicizing’ work, the Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin in particular, are not readily apparent to the present author.¹¹¹¹These presumed similarities are pointed out in Chong/Wieseman 1992, p. 23, and Brusati 1995, p. 21. For an illustration of the Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin (present whereabouts unknown) see Sumowski II, 1984, p. 131.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 150.

Chong/Wieseman 1992, p. 23; Brusati 1995, p. 21

1903, p. 135, no. 1254; 1976, p. 289, no. A 1500; 2007, no. 150

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Dirk van Hoogstraten, Virgin and Child with St Anne, 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200108805