This delicate panel painting, probably executed in Utrecht at the height of the artist’s maturity, demonstrates the familiarity with Renaissance painting that Scorel had garnered from his time in Rome from 1521 to 1524, when Pope Adrian VI appointed him keeper of the Vatican collections to succeed Raphael (1483-1520). After the pope’s death in 1523, the artist embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land before returning to the Low Countries in 1524 to settle in Utrecht, where he was largely responsible for introducing Italian Mannerism.

In his works, Scorel combines Renaissance elements, like the symmetry in the composition, with mannerist features such as the distortion of body proportions. There are resonances between the depiction of the body of the Child Jesus, with its highly marked anatomy, and of the faces of both Mary and St Anne and works by Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Raphael (1483-1520).

The provenance of the board is the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen collection, from which it entered the art market in Vienna and from there to a number of European and American collections before being acquired for the BBVA Collection.

Particularly worth mentioning in the composition is the outline of the figure of St Anne remaining from the original drawing, revealing discrepancies with regards the final composition and some of the artist’s pentimenti. Also worth underscoring is the olive flower alluding to his future Passion that the Child Jesus holds in his hand.