File:Traini, Francesco, Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, 1340-45.jpg

English: Francesco Traini, Italian, active 1321–1345

Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, 1340–45 Tempera on wood panel transferred to pressed wood panel 84.9 x 56.0 cm. (33 7/16 x 22 1/16 in.) frame: 101.3 x 76.5 x 14.6 cm. (39 7/8 x 30 1/8 x 5 3/4 in.) Bequest of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. y1963-2

Francesco Traini was the most important artist in mid-fourteenth-century Pisa. This panel, formed the center of an altarpiece in a monastery outside the city; related panels are in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy, and the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. The Madonna and Child with Saint Anne is an unusual subject for the time; this is one of the first Italian images of Mary’s mother, based on oral traditions compiled in the early thirteenth century in The Golden Legend. Anne, a hieratic, otherworldly figure, protects the intimate embrace of mother and child. To focus attention on key elements in the painting, Traini used pastiglia work, raised designs in gesso (plaster) that are painted or gilded. The goldfinch eating millet grain, symbolic of Jesus’s Passion, and the Child’s coral necklace, intended to ward off evil, are executed in this technique. The small donor figure, a Benedictine nun, was apparently added later, since she is painted over Saint Anne’s robe.