Romance, jealousy, the ultimate triumph of joy—Giotto’s early 14th-century fresco Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate has it all. Giotto is illustrating an event narrated not in the Gospels but in other early Christian writings.
According to tradition, Joachim, a righteous Jewish man of the first century BC, wanted to make a special sacrifice in the Temple. However, the fact that he and his wife, both now old, had never been able to have children was seen as a sign of God’s disfavor, and Joachim’s proposal was rejected. Humiliated and disappointed, he sought solitude away from Jerusalem, while Anna, too, took time to grieve and pray. She eventually put aside her mourning, donned her wedding dress, and determined to find God’s consoling presence in the natural world surrounding her. It was then that an angel approached her to tell her that she would conceive miraculously; Joachim also knew, and she should go to meet him at the city gate.
Giotto illustrates what happened next: the couple embraces just outside the city’s Golden Gate. Anna’s hands sink into her husband’s white curls as she cradles his head. Joachim draws her to himself. Giotto blends their haloes as their faces touch in a kiss, a powerful visual illustration of their unity and intimacy.
Behind Anna stand several women. All but one are smiling, and their open lips suggest they are engaged in conversation animated by joy at the barren couple’s sudden blessing. A single figure stands aloof, a woman clothed entirely in black, who turns her face away from the happy scene and shields her eyes with her veil. This may be a servant in the household who, before Anna’s angelic revelation, is said to have taunted her mercilessly for her infertility.
This particular character may never be able to enter into the gladness of this moment, or of the reality of God’s power and mercy, but her bitterness can be but a footnote in the story. This is because, also behind Anna, the city’s open gate indicates the path to a glorious future. Its openness contrasts vividly with the rest of Jerusalem’s wall, a solid white façade rising into a perfectly azure sky; the gate, open and inviting, suggests how Joachim and Anna’s love creates space for Mary, their graced daughter, to enter the world—indeed, to burst upon the stage of history as herself the “gate of heaven,” through which our Savior will enter the world He created to redeem it.
As we approach the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anna on July 26, let us ask their intercession. As Giotto teaches us, they honored God by welcoming fully the crosses and joys of married life; they chose fortitude, hope, and faith, when gloom, despair, and doubt might have been more natural. What noble grandparents for the Word made flesh!
