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Lot Essay
This richly gilt panel presents the Heilige Sippe, or Holy Kinship, one of the most ambitious and theologically elaborate subjects of late medieval devotional imagery. Centred on the extended family of the Virgin, the composition gives pictorial form to the medieval doctrine of the Trinubium Annae – Saint Anne’s three marriages – through which a complex sacred genealogy was constructed, encompassing the mothers, fathers and children of Christ’s earthly kin.
The Virgin, enthroned at the centre, presents the Christ Child to Saint Anne, who occupies a position of particular devotional prominence. Flanking them are Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome, the Virgin’s half-sisters, each identified, together with their husbands, by inscribed banderoles. Around them gathers the next generation of holy descendants: the children who would become apostles and saints are shown reading, playing and conversing at the women’s feet. The holy women, resplendent in gold haloes and richly coloured draperies, are set against an elaborately tooled gold ground, while the male members of the kinship appear behind them as half-length figures, a compositional device especially characteristic of monumental South German treatments of the theme.
The painting relates to a drawing of the Holy Kinship, likely of Franconian origin, which seemingly served as a template for painted interpretations of the subject on several occasions, including a version in Frensdorf in the Bamberg district (see https://annamorahtfromm.info/fundstuecke/fundstuecke) . The present panel, bearing the monogram 'HM' at lower centre, was first published by Alfred Stange in 1966 as a work by the Swabian painter Hans Maler von Ulm, also known as Maler zu Schwaz, and dated to circa 1510 – an attribution repeated in the Kindlers Malerei Lexicon the following year. This identification was decisively rejected by Anna Moraht-Fromm in her 2016 monograph on Maler's oeuvre. Moraht-Fromm's reattribution to the broader Ulm school is consistent with the densely packed figural composition, the lavish use of tooled gold and the refined but somewhat rigid handling of drapery, all pointing to a competent South German workshop active in the early sixteenth century, working within the conventions of Late Gothic devotional painting at a moment when the cult of Saint Anne and the Holy Kinship was at its height – and shortly before it came under sustained Protestant critique.
The Virgin, enthroned at the centre, presents the Christ Child to Saint Anne, who occupies a position of particular devotional prominence. Flanking them are Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome, the Virgin’s half-sisters, each identified, together with their husbands, by inscribed banderoles. Around them gathers the next generation of holy descendants: the children who would become apostles and saints are shown reading, playing and conversing at the women’s feet. The holy women, resplendent in gold haloes and richly coloured draperies, are set against an elaborately tooled gold ground, while the male members of the kinship appear behind them as half-length figures, a compositional device especially characteristic of monumental South German treatments of the theme.
The painting relates to a drawing of the Holy Kinship, likely of Franconian origin, which seemingly served as a template for painted interpretations of the subject on several occasions, including a version in Frensdorf in the Bamberg district (see https://annamorahtfromm.info/fundstuecke/fundstuecke) . The present panel, bearing the monogram 'HM' at lower centre, was first published by Alfred Stange in 1966 as a work by the Swabian painter Hans Maler von Ulm, also known as Maler zu Schwaz, and dated to circa 1510 – an attribution repeated in the Kindlers Malerei Lexicon the following year. This identification was decisively rejected by Anna Moraht-Fromm in her 2016 monograph on Maler's oeuvre. Moraht-Fromm's reattribution to the broader Ulm school is consistent with the densely packed figural composition, the lavish use of tooled gold and the refined but somewhat rigid handling of drapery, all pointing to a competent South German workshop active in the early sixteenth century, working within the conventions of Late Gothic devotional painting at a moment when the cult of Saint Anne and the Holy Kinship was at its height – and shortly before it came under sustained Protestant critique.