references
For St. Anne, like for The Virgin Mary and infant Jesus, the master has done plenty of sketches of men, women, and babies. In order to find and immortalize the perfect movement, he has drawn young men arms then made it more feminine until getting the arm of the Virgin. In his first version of “St. Anne, the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus blessing St John The Baptist” also known as “The Burlington House Cartoon” dating from 1500, the bust and the shoulder of Mary are clearly masculine although the face of the Virgin is imbued with a stunning grace of a soft femininity.
St. John the Baptist. around 1508-1519? Department of Paintings, INV. 775 © 2009Musée du Louvre / Angèle Dequier
The resemblance between St. Anne and her daughter is extremely striking, like two faces of the same androgynous body, one gazing at the other with an enigmatic yet angelic smile and pointing the sky to her.
It is the same movement that we can find in his St John The Baptist who, with his wavy hair, his gracious attitude and profound expression reminds of the painter’s. They all have this same expression in which we can find this unreal and unperturbed smile hovering, this very smile that we can find in his very famous Mona Lisa which has given rise to so many diverse speculations on the sex of the model. Masculine, feminine... but incarnation goes even further.
