Attributed to Luis de Vargas (Seville, 1505-1567) Embrace of San Joaquín and Santa Ana before the Golden Gate. Oil ...

Attributed to Luis de Vargas (Seville, 1505-1567) Embrace of San Joaquín and Santa Ana before the Golden Gate. Oil on panel. The embrace at the Golden Gate is a pious tradition widely spread by early apocrypha; in the Middle Ages it reached new popularity in compilations like the Golden Legend. Joachim and Anna, elderly and childless, suffer the contempt of their neighbors, and the priests of the Temple of Jerusalem reject the offerings presented by Joachim. He then retires to the mountains with his flocks, but an angel appears to him and orders him to return to Hannah, because God is going to give them "a descendant that the saints and prophets have never had or will have." The scene narrates the meeting of the two when they are engaged in marriage, before one of the gates of Jerusalem, the Golden Gate. The parents appear embraced, at which time it was considered that Santa Ana conceived the Virgin, since according to the Church, Mary had been conceived without sin. An angel joins the heads of the protagonists with his hands surrounded by other characters. 150 x 96 cm. Luis de Vargas was trained with his father, the painter Juan de Vargas; He went to Italy very young, where, apparently, he spent most of his life and where he completed his training by working in the circle of Rafael's immediate followers, among which Perino del Vaga stands out. Returning to Seville, close to turning 50, he works in the city and achieves great fame in his artistic circles; he died in that city, after having contributed to the renovation of Andalusian painting, by consolidating in the Sevillian school the Romanist forms introduced by the flamenco Pedro de Campaña.