Devotion to the Virgin’s mother, Saint Anne, reached a fever pitch in late fifteenth-century Germany, so much so that figural groups like this have a special name: Anna Selbdritt (roughly translated, “Anne herself the third”). As the elder matriarch holds her wriggling grandchild, he grasps for his mother, who remains perpetually out of reach. Despite the infant’s playfulness, his mother and grandmother’s doleful looks suggest their foreknowledge of his eventual Crucifixion.  This work may have been intended as a house altar for private devotion, with Saint Anne in the role of intercessor for the faithful.