The Holy Family with Saint Anne

The Virgin Mary occupied an important place in the religiosity and culture of rural communities. In folk representations, various images of the Virgin Mary were most common: alone (for example, Our Lady of Sorrows; see E/16842/ML), with the Child (for example, Our Lady of Czestochowa; see E/9360/ML), with St Joseph (Holy Family) or holding the body of Christ taken down from the cross (Pietà). Their form was significantly influenced by sacred paintings from churches created in past eras. Also those with themes popular in the Middle Ages, such as the Coronation of Mary (with Christ and God the Father; see E/6358/2/ML) and St Anna Samotrzecia (with the Child and St Anna).

Saint Anne - mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, wife of Saint Joachim - is a saint of the Catholic and Orthodox Church. In iconography, she was depicted with a girl, Mary, whom she teaches to read, or as a single sister (which in Old Polish means: the three of us), with Mary and Jesus on her lap. Such an image of St Anne came from the brush of Leonardo da Vinci, among others. Against the background of many paintings with this theme, interesting were the representations of Dominikos Theotokopulos, known as El Greco, and Peter Paul Rubens, where the women and the child were accompanied by a man, St Joseph. The self-quartered, or foursome, depiction of the Holy Family with St Anne and the dove of the Holy Spirit accompanied by angels above the figure includes this 19th century folk painting of unknown authorship.

The feast in honour of St Anne first appeared in the East. In 550 a church dedicated to her was erected in Constantinople. In Western Europe, the cult spread widely in the 13th and 14th centuries thanks to knights returning from the Crusades. It originated among the people, who wanted to have a special protector in her. Families and households, brides, spouses, women expecting children, childless women, mothers, grandmothers and widows were entrusted to the protection of Saint Anne. She was also considered the patron saint of sailors and bakers.

In Poland, St. Anne is particularly venerated in Silesia. Her cult has existed there since the beginning of the 14th century. Among many churches dedicated to her, the most prominent is the Basilica on St. Anne's Mountain, where a miraculously famous figure of the saint depicted as a solitary figure is venerated.