The sitter, Anna van Bergen, is shown in the guise of the Virgin, and her son as that of the Christ Child. Their identification goes back to Van Mander (q.v.), writing in 1604, some eighty years after the picture was painted, although it was not until 1884 that Henry Hymans was able to associate the surviving pictures with Van Mander’s reference.  Anna Van Bergen was the wife of Gossaert’s main patron in the artist’s later years, Adolf of Burgundy. Van Mander’s passage is worth quoting in full ‘Among other things, when in the service of the Marquis of Veere, Mabuse painted an image of Mary in which the face was painted after the Marquis’ wife and the little child after her child. This piece was so outstandingly subtle, and painted so purely, that everything else one sees by him appears crude by comparison.  And there was a blue drapery, so absolutely clear, it looks as if it were freshly painted.  This piece was later seen in Gouda with the Lord of Froimont’ (translation by Hessel Miedema). There are several versions of the composition, some of them of very high quality, as is this one, which suggests that the artist was required by the patron to produce more than one picture of the sitters.  This version is unique, in the sense that it is without the illusionist frame, which appears in all the others both originals and copies.

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