This exquisitely illuminated cutting, produced in Vienna between 1440 and 1460, once formed part of a German-language hagiographical manuscript, perhaps a vernacular rendition of the Golden Legend. Now preserved in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s John Frederick Lewis Collection, this fragment encapsulates the devotional complexity, visual opulence, and theological resonance of Viennese manuscript illumination at its zenith. Through shimmering pigments and sacred geometry, it proclaims Saint Anne as the flesh-bearing matrix of Redemption, a grandmother whose embrace contains the very mystery of the Incarnation.

At its heart lies an ornate historiated initial F, within which the figure of Saint Anne emerges as the physical and symbolic axis of the sacred lineage—holding both the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child in her arms, she embodies the generational continuity of Incarnation. This configuration belongs to the devotional genre known as the Anna Selbdritt (or Sainte Anne Trinitaire), a visual tradition that flourished in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Such depictions varied—sometimes Anne held Mary who held Christ, sometimes she supported both simultaneously—but all variants stressed a triadic structure, emphasizing the fleshly and maternal genealogy of Christ through a terrestrial and embodied “trinity” of grandmother, mother, and Son (Lawless 435–36).

The divine maternity expressed in form finds its counterpart in color: the deep blue background, adorned with gilded stars, evokes a celestial firmament, situating the holy trio in the eternal realm of heaven while also affirming Mary’s title as Stella Maris, the guiding star. The gold invokes the light of divinity and incorruptibility, while also resonating with the medieval allegorical pairing of Christ as gold and Mary as silver—a symbolic dyad that further explains Anne’s patronage over miners, among many other domains (Holweck). According to the Benedictine monk Trithemius of Sponheim, Anne was invoked for ailments of body and soul alike: she was said to cure melancholia, protect travelers and prisoners, safeguard sailors from peril, and assist women in labor.

(Fun fact: One of her patronal roles—protection from storms—proved pivotal in Christian history, for it was to Anne that a terrified Martin Luther cried out during a thunderstorm, vowing to become a monk should she spare his life. In fulfilling that vow, he entered the Augustinian friars and unknowingly set the Reformation into motion [Lawless 433].)