Two parents, two sets of signs

The saints named in this title are the parents of the Virgin. Anne is conventionally given a book, often shown teaching her daughter to read, and a green or red mantle; Joachim is given the offering the tradition attaches to him, a lamb or a pair of doves, and the appearance of an older man kept at the edge of the scene. The third element of the title is not a person at all: the Immaculate Conception is a doctrine, and it acquired a fixed visual formula of its own — a young woman standing alone, a crescent beneath her feet, stars, white and blue.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1640 and gives the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, UK as its location. The dimensions are 255.5 x 177 cm, a large upright. It is filed under female portraiture, Religion and religious cultural heritage, with Baroque as the style and Spanish as the nationality; the measured colour family is ochre.

A doctrine given a body

The interest of the combination is that it puts two different kinds of naming in one frame. Anne and Joachim are identified the ordinary way, by objects the tradition assigns them. The central figure is identified by a formula assembled to make an abstract proposition visible. One is a caption; the other is a diagram.