Follower of Jean André

Probably private collection, Canada;
Thereafter acquired by the present collector.

This work is a small-scale adaptation in reverse (possibly done after a print) of a painting by the seventeenth-century French artist Jean André in the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne, Auxerre. That monumental altarpiece was reproduced on several occasions, with versions in the Hospice civil du Saint-Esprit, Toulon, and the National Trust, Stourhead (inv. no. 732341).¹

¹ https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/732341

The composition depicts the Virgin Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth just after the Annunciation, an episode recounted in the Gospel of Luke (1:36-56). The youthful Virgin, from whom a divine light emanates, greets her older cousin, herself six-months pregnant with Saint John the Baptist. The women are accompanied by their husbands: Joseph, who holds a bundle of clothes under his arm, at left, and Zacharias, who stands before an arched doorway, at right.