The painting of Anna Selbdritt from Rožňava (1513), in literature also known under the name of Metercia from Rožňava, is one of the most famous works of art of the late Gothic period in Slovakia. While the circuit the artist drew the inspiration from remains a subject of discussion, there is little doubt of the panel environment, in which it is located up to now. The group of St. Anne with her daughter Virgin Mary and a grandchild – Jesus – among them belonged to the most common themes of paintings in Spiš as well as in Eastern Slovakia (Levoča, Ľubica, Spišská Sobota, Strážky, Prešov, etc.) around 1500. The boom of this iconography was connected with the theological idea of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and the paintings ordered by religious brotherhoods of St. Anne promoted this idea. Metercia from Rožňava is different from most other similar paintings, showing the landscape scenes with images of mining life. And so on this panel one can see a man, on the threshold of modern times, and his images of mechanisms necessary for mining of ores and precious metals, including pulleys, wagons and some works such as ore conveying, smelting and so on. The whole scene is overseen from the middle of the clouds by the half-figure of God the Father, while there are a few angels behind St. Anne climbing the tree on the left. This theme probably comes from the Old Testament, which speaks of wealth that “one cannot search for in a treetop, but in its roots” (Daniel 4).
The panel painting of Rožňava integrates several meanings: Saint Anne is the patron saint of miners, who had their work illustrated in scenes behind the central group. From this perspective, it represents an immediate bond with the local environment. The tree on the left is moralistic-religious imagery and parallel to the work of miners mining precious metals. Finally – a promising landscape behind the central group represents one of the earliest attempts to illustrate the cultural landscape in our painting art – the natural environment inhabited and used by man.
Dušan Buran