CARNEVALE, Fra
(b. ca. 1425, Urbino, d. 1484, Urbino)

The Birth of the Virgin (detail)

1467
Tempera and oil on wood
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

It is remarkable that the mother of the child - rather young for Saint Anne - is depicted lying in bed nude. Virtually every fifteenth-century scene of the Birth of the Virgin shows Anne reclining in bed, decorously dressed to receive visitors. However, the three maids attending Saint Anne - unlike the woman seated alongside her - are clothed all'antica. This implies that the birth has been imagined as a past event refracted through contemporary life.