Anna herself third (Leonardo da Vinci)
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| Anna herself the third |
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| Leonardo da Vinci , approx. 1503–1519 |
| Oil on poplar wood |
| 168 × 130 cm |
| Louvre |
Anna selbdritt (Italian title: Anna Metterza ) is a painting by the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). In the image, in the tradition of the image type Anna herself, three generations are shown: St. Anna (the mother of Mary), the Virgin Mary and her son, the baby Jesus .
The picture is in parts of the landscape and - particularly clearly recognizable by Mary's coat - not completely finished. Leonardo apparently worked on the painting until his death. After Leonardo's death in 1519, the picture came into the collection of the King of France Francis I (1494–1547). The whereabouts until 1629, when it was from Richelieu (1585–1642) to the French King Louis XIII. (1601–1643) was donated is not fully understood. Today it is in the Louvre in Paris under inventory number 776 .
Client
It is not yet possible to clarify who the original commissioner of the picture was, because no sources have been found. It could have been intended as an altarpiece for the Servite monks of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. It is also conceivable that the artist created the work on his own initiative. Leonardo worked on the painting during his second stay in Milan around 1506. He appears in the French King Louis XII. to have found a prospect. The French art historian Daniel Arasse (1944-2003) assumed that Ludwig XII. commissioned the picture from Leonardo himself during his stay in Milan in autumn 1499. On the one hand, the veneration of St. Anne was very widespread in Europe at the time, on the other hand, Anna is the first name of the queen (Anne de Bretagne) , whom Ludwig married in January 1499. Their daughter Claude de France was born on October 13, 1499 . Anna was then considered the patron saint of young married couples, sterile and pregnant women, and she was especially venerated in Brittany. When Leonardo moved to France, he took the still unfinished picture with him.
description
The picture shows a group of three people in front of a mountainous landscape. In the center of the picture the Virgin Mary sits on her mother Anna's knees. The baby Jesus is playing with a lamb at her feet. He tries to climb the lamb, but the lamb is reluctant. Maria leans forward to retrieve the boy who has just slipped out of her arms, while Anna watches the scene smiling and in complete calm.
Anna supports her left arm on her hip. The back of her head is covered with a gray veil, she wears a long-sleeved gray dress, a subtle reference to her widowhood. From the appearance of the two women, who are only slightly different in age, one could not infer a picture of mother and daughter. Maria wears a red dress with a deep cleavage and short sleeves. It is bordered with a ruffle at the neckline. Her gray undergarment, which covers her entire arm, is as delicate and translucent as a veil. The hips and the lower part of the body are covered in a wide blue coat. In contrast to many Madonna pictures of the time, Maria wears no jewelry. Even her dark hair is not covered by the usual white headscarf of a Madonna.
The ground and the landscape are rocky, with almost no signs of vegetation or traces of human life. The ground in the foreground is stony, two roughly laid steps can be seen. The next level, lying in the twilight, seems strangely shapeless and possibly belongs to the roughly laid out areas that were not completed by the painter. In the distance, a rugged rocky mountain rises up to Anna's head, which is lost in a gray sfumato . The horizon is noticeably high in the picture, which emphasizes the hieratic charisma of the group.
The only sign of vigorous life in this barren landscape is the strong, healthy tree that grows up behind the boy Jesus. In western Christian art, the tree can symbolize eternal life or the overcoming of death through Christ.
Leonardo's examination of the subject of an Anna herself three
No other painting by Leonardo has survived as many preliminary studies. In addition to a series of sketches, there are three different versions of a complete composition, without the one described by Vasari in his vite , which apparently has not survived.
In recent research, the first of the three boxes is the London box, the so-called Burlington box, which is dated around 1500. The boy John is shown here. In the variant from 1501, which was revised again for the Louvre version, the figure of John has been replaced by the lamb. Compared to the previous versions of the theme by Leonardo, Arasse sees the dynamics of the figures and the order of the composition, which are conditioned by “the movement of the baby Jesus and the complex interwoven reactions” of those involved, as new.
Studies and sketches
Head of mary
Head of St. Anna,
Composition and Motion studies
Interpretations of the picture
For this image of a generation succession of grandmother, mother and child, which at first glance is clear, different interpretations have been proposed in art history. A key to the interpretation of pictures that were created in Europe up to the 18th and early 19th centuries can be the identification of the client and the planned placement of the picture. But this is not documented in Leonardo's picture.
The earliest known interpretation is in a letter from the Carmelite Fra Piero da Novellara of April 3, 1501, where he describes an early - not preserved - draft of Leonardo's for Anna Selbdritt:
“It [the Christ Child] turns to a lamb and appears to be hugging it. The mother, who almost rises from St. Anne's lap, holds the child in order to separate it from the lamb (a sacrificial animal that means the passion). St. Anna, who gets up a little, seems to want to hold back her daughter so that she does not separate the child from the lamb. Anna is supposed to represent the church that does not want the Passion of Christ to be hindered. "
Buchholz takes the same position as Fra Piero, for whom Anna represents the Christian church, Mary the embodiment of motherly love and the Jesus boy playing with the lamb represents the passion and crucifixion of Christ.
Interpretation of the picture by Sigmund Freud
The founders of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology , Sigmund Freud and CG Jung , also dealt with Leonardo's picture. Jung sees an embodiment of the Great Mother in Leonardo’s Anna .
Freud goes into the picture as part of his investigation of his own childhood memory, which generally deals with the problem of sublimation and, in particular, with Leonardo's productivity as a scientist and engineer as well as the origin and nature of his homosexual orientation . Freud locates it in the special constellation of Leonardo's childhood. As an illegitimate child, Leonardo spent the first years of his life in the absence of his father with his mother, whose over- tenderness led to an intense erotic bond between the boy and the mother. He sees his thesis supported by the fact that he wants to recognize the shape of a vulture in Mary's cloak, whose tail brushes the child's mouth, whereby Freud sees in the boy's dream the chain of associations from the mother's breast to the bird's tail and the penis. The exploration of feminine nature and the anatomy of the mother and the desire of the mother, which the boy perceived as forbidden, was sublimated by the urge to research of the adult, who explored the phenomena of nature, the anatomy of man and who invented countless machines been.
The preference for young and beautiful pupils is due to Leonardo's early childhood autoerotism , since the boys ... are only substitutes and renewal of his own childlike person whom he loves as his mother loved him as a child.
With regard to the Anna-selbdritt picture, he puts forward the thesis that a synthesis of Leonardo's childhood story is entered in the picture . The figure of the father is missing from the person pyramid. Leonardo was practically raised by two mothers, his birth wife and the young wife of his grandfather, into whose household he was taken at the age of 6, who both loved him very tenderly. This also explains the youthful features of the two women depicted, who hardly differ in age. With their enigmatic smile, the smile of the Mona Lisa , both awaken the painter's memory of the mother of his early childhood.
aftermath
Even when the box was exhibited in Leonardo's Florentine studio, it aroused general astonishment and admiration. Vasari , who no longer knew Leonardo personally, tells a story in his book that is apparently known in Florence:
“Finally he designed a cardboard box for a picture of the Virgin with Saint Anne and the Christ Child, which not only delighted all artists, but was also admired by the whole world. When the draft was finished, one saw young and old for two days, men and women, making a pilgrimage to the room where Leonardo's miracle was on display for a great celebration. "
literature
- Daniel Arasse : Leonardo da Vinci. Cologne 2002. ISBN 3-8321-7150-9
- Frank Zöllner : Leonardo da Vinci. 1452-1519. All paintings u. Drawings. Critical catalog of the paintings. XXVII. Pp. 422-426. Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-8228-5726-2
- Carlo Pedretti : The Burlington House Cartoon. In: Burlington Magazine. No. 778, Jg. 110, 1968, pp. 22, 25-28
- Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich : La Sainte Anne de Léonard de Vinci. In: Heydenreich: Leonardo studies. Edited by G. Passavant. Munster 1988.
- J. Nathan: Some Drawing Practices of Leonardo da Vinci. New Light on the Saint Anne. in: Communications from the Art History Institute in Florence. 36, 1992. pp. 85-102.
- Elke Linda Buchholz: Leonardo da Vinci. Life and work. Cologne: Könemann 1999. ISBN 3-82903946-8
- Sigmund Freud : A childhood memory of Leonardo da Vinci. Introduction by Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel. Frankfurt a. M. 3rd ed. 2006. ISBN 978-3-596-10457-4
Web links
- Anna herself on the website of the Musée du Louvre, French
- Anna herself in the Base Joconde of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arasse 2002. p. 445.
- ↑ Buchholz 1999. p. 74.
- ↑ Arasse 1999. p. 449.
- ^ Franz Zöllner: Leonardo da Vinci . Cologne. 1990, p. 65.
- ↑ Buchholz 1999. p. 74.
- ↑ It seems that I was destined to study the vulture so thoroughly, because it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me opened his mouth with his cock and pushed his cock against my lips many times with this. Quoted from Freud: A childhood memory of Leonardo da Vinci. 2006. p. 51; all quotations in italics from: Freud 2006.
- ↑ How to find the vulture "discovered" by Freud in Mary's robe. fr:
- ^ About the book by Freud, franz.
- ↑ Freud 2006. p. 69.
- ^ Giorgio Vasari: CVs of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects . About Trude Fein. Zurich 1974. p. 329.
The last supper | The Adoration of the Magi of the Orient | The adoration of the child with two angels in a landscape (2) | Anna herself third | Bacchus | Portrait of the Mona Lisa | Portrait of Ginevra de 'Benci | Portrait of a musician (2) | The lady with the ermine | The Madonna of the Rocks | Saint Jerome | John the Baptist | La Belle Ferronnière (2) | La Bella Principessa (2) | Leda with the swan (†) | Madonna Benois | Madonna Dreyfus (2) | Madonna Litta (2) | Madonna with the Carnation | Madonna with the spindle (†) | Salvator Mundi | The Scapigliata | The Battle of Anghiari (†) | Tobias and the Angel (1) | The baptism of Christ (1) | The Annunciation (1)
(†) missing • (1) Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci • (2) Attribution controversial