Masaccio and Masolino: St. Anne Metterza

It is a work that cannot be missing in any art history manual.
The St. Anne Metterza by Masaccio is one of the most famous images of Italian figurative art.

Scholars agree that it was realized in collaboration with Masolino di Panicale, who is supposed to have executed the figure of St. Anne.

It is indeed the presence of Mary's mother that hints at a delicate theological reflection: the line of the female genealogy of Christ.
Mary appears with a solemn contemplative pose, probably at the request of the Benedictine nuns who commissioned the work for their convent.

But it is the dialectic of gestures between the Virgin and Her Child that reveals that Mary is not only the daughter of Saint Anne, but also the daughter of her own son. A theological intuition that was already stressed by the Supreme Poet Dante Alighieri: Mary is the mother of the child she carries in her womb and the daughter of God's will in accepting it.