The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Joachim

Diego de Pesquera

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This panel came from a retable made for the parish church of Los Ojíjares, near Granada, which was dedicated to Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin. Saint Anne and her husband, Joaquim, prominently featured in the relief, were honored in Catholic devotion as emblems of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, a cult that was especially popular in Spain. The panel remained in place from its creation in the mid-sixteenth century until it was sold in 1881. A record of its commission in 1567 establishes that Diego de Pesquera carved the relief; the painting and gilding were entrusted to other specialists. The surface is amazingly intact, and the relief is a model display of the Spanish estofado technique, in which gilding and polychromy interact in vibrant patterns. Brocaded fabrics are imitated with particular skill. The sculptor clearly was aware of developments in Italian Renaissance art. There is an attractive naturalism in the broad forms of the healthy wriggling infant. Equally striking is the elegantly mannered attenuation of the Virgin and Saint Anne.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art