Among Langus' scenes from the life of Mary we
find four versions of St Anne Teaches
Mary to Read. The apocryphal motif from Mary’s childhood is described in
the Golden Legend, has a venerable tradition in Slovenian lands and was often part
of 18th-century Baroque church art. In the 1840s, however, the motif
became particularly attractive during the renewal and popularisation of church decorations.
The traditional scenes also elevated the values that contemporary bourgeois
society aspired to. The bourgeoisie also demonstrated own social importance
through presentations and education of their offspring, with mothers playing
the key role.
The reading lesson takes place in a loosely
indicated interior, in front of a large stone-wall window; the opening, with
vines spreading above it, looks onto a monastery building on the right and the
idyllic Mediterranean-Alpine landscape with cypress and pine trees, a lake and
the foot of a hill in the background. The two figures, the elderly St Anne
seated and the young Mary standing beside her, dominate the narrow space, and
are joined in an intimate process of learning. Three other objects are visible:
an open book, exposed in the centre, which the protagonists hold together and to
which the eyes and right index fingers of both are directed; a footstool, on
which Anne's right foot rests and onto which the barefoot Mary is climbing with
her right foot; and a basket with a canvas and scissors in the background
behind her. In all the objects, we can discern genre clues, but also symbolic
ones: the book is a central teaching tool and also a source of knowledge, the footstool
points to domestic intimacy and at the same time helps animate the scene, and
the scissors, which are presented as part of a Biedermeier still life, are also
associated with separation. The monastic architecture in the background
suggests that this is a representation of Mary's emphatically religious
upbringing, and that she was therefore already being guided towards
contemplation by her mother before her arrival at the temple.
The present work is an illustrative summation of
the oeuvre of the painter Matevž Langus, who is presented in the permanent
collection primarily as a bourgeois portraitist. The painting St Anne Teaching Mary to Read shows that
Langus also drew from domestic traditions and was primarily concerned with
church painting. On the other hand, he leaned on contemporary Nazarene ideas of
the time, which shows that he was involved in the contemporary artistic scene,
which he was able to experience in Vienna and Rome. The painting's date of 1840
means we are looking at Langus' earliest work with a Nazarene colour palette.
It is a fine example of an instructive and serene Nazarene painting, inspired
by the manner of Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.
This is evident in the depiction of scenes with a reduced number of figures and
with idealised, static and representational features. The characteristic colour
scheme is striking, with densely-pleated draperies with accentuated highlights
at the tops of the folds. Pastel shades of blue create a complementary contrast
to the orange surfaces, the latter reflected in soft pink tones. The setting is
immersed in an idyllic atmosphere.
A cluster of surviving sketchbook drawings
suggests that Langus might have taken the motif from a Nazarene painting, but
we do not know the original composition. The sketches reveal mainly studies of
the faces of children and hands pointing or holding a book. There are also
variations in the positioning of the figures and in the course and shading of
the drapery of the Virgin's dress and the headscarf of St Anne.
We can guess the original location of the
painting with some precision. The religious motif, the size and the upper semi-circular
shape of the painting suggest that it was part of an altarpiece. Taking into
account the emphasis on education, with the highlighted role of St Anne
preparing the young Mary for the admission into the temple, and the fact that
Langus painted frescoes for the Ursulines of Škofja Loka around 1840, it is
possible to associate the commissioners with this monastic environment. After 1839,
the monastery and the church underwent a major renovation, financed by Marquis
Felix Gozzani. In 1844, the Italian nobleman also commissioned Langus to
produce a large canvas with an image of the Immaculate Conception, which
originally adorned the main altar of the abbey church in Škofja Loka. In 1927, a
Slovenian art historian Viktor Steska also wrote that there was a painting of
St Anne in this church.