St Anne with the Virgin and Child

The iconographical type of St Anne with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus developed in the 13th century, and is linked with the cult of St Anne, which had flourished since the Middle Ages reaching its peak at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. This design for a stained glass window, drawn around 1502-03, belongs to the more archaic one of the two main types. The standing figure of St Anne holds the infant Jesus and is of monumental size compared to the Virgin who stands next to her. On the basis of this drawing stained glass windows were executed, with minor changes, first for the church of St Sebald in Nürnberg in 1515, and then for the church of St Gumbert in Ansbach around 1520.