Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The article is focused on the image of St Anne in Lithuanian art of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. It briefly presents the prevailing iconographic types that have not yet been widely discussed and highlights the continuity of the established iconography. Through the social model of the family “encoded” in the images of the saint, the aim is to reveal whether the visual images of St Anne relate and interact with the spiritual and moral attitudes of the Enlightenment and emphasis on education during this epoch. With the help of iconographic, partly iconological, and source studies methods, the socio-cultural level of the past is addressed, questions are raised about the power of St Anne’s images, which could have been resorted to for the understanding and change of reality. Compared with Western Europe, the images of “The education of the Virgin” appeared in Lithuania quite late: they emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century and gradually gained popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century. Two variants of the composition of “The education of the Virgin” evolved conveying the image of the Embodiment of Christ and of St Anne, who brought her daughter up perfectly. They continued into the nineteenth century, when in their abundance they surpassed other iconographic types of St Anne. In Lithuania, the most influential and most replicated “The education of the Virgin” image of the period discussed is the engraving of Joseph Wagner made according the drawing of Jacopo Amigoni in 1725–1766. Like in the paintings of “The St Anne Trinity”, several late-eighteenth-century paintings of “The education of the Virgin” place emphasis on St Anne’s piety, which is also confirmed in hagiographic literature.