Saint Anne, the Virgin, Saint Elizabeth, Saint John and the Christ Child
1525 - 1532. Oil on panel.Room 052B
The Virgin Mary reaches out to the Christ Child, who walks toward her. In the lower left corner, Saint John, adorned with a necklace of flowers, offers a flower to his cousin. A lily growing on the right symbolizes the purity of Mary. In the middle ground, Saints Ann and Elizabeth watch. Visible in the background are The Embrace at the Golden Gate, an apocryphal event in Mary´s life taken from Jacopo da Voragine´s Golden Legend. Along with the lily, this also alludes to the Virgin´s Immaculate Conception.
After his periods in Italy and Valencia, Yáñez returned to his native Almedina (Ciudad Real), where he spent the final phase of his career. For the main altarpiece of the church of Santa María in that town, he made this panel dedicated to the Holy Kinship of the Virgin. In it, he takes models from Dürer, Pollaiuolo and Leonardo for the principal figures, always reinterpreting them with great character. However, the use of dark lighting and the alteration of classical proportions recall the premises of Mannerism.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Cipriano Salvador Gijón collected works of art from churches near Infantes (Ciudad Real), including this panel by Yáñez de la Almedina, which he protected in his home in Infantes until it was seized (23/01/1938) for safekeeping. At the end of the Civil War, the Servicio de Defensa del Patrimonio Artístico Nacional returned this painting to the church of Infantes (20/02/1940). This church, with the authorisation of the la Secretaría de Cámara del Obispado Priorato de las Órdenes Militares, processed the sale to the Prado Museum in 1941.
