Virgin and Child with St Anne

myminifactory

This retable, defaced and vandalized on March 7th, 1580, originally portrayed the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. Saint Anne was Mary's mother and Jesus' grandmother in apocryphal Christian and Islamic tradition. The artwork, housed in St. Martin's Cathedral in Utrecht, was attacked during Reformation iconoclasm after the city government transferred the cathedral from the Diocese of Utrecht to local Calvinists in the 16th century.