St Anne teaching the Virgin to read

This statuette in ivory depicts 'St Anne teaching the Virgin to read', seated in a wide chair with her right arm round the Virgin, who stands at her side, pointing to a book St Anne has on her lap and in her left hand. The group, very likely to be Indo-Portuguese (Goa) and made in about 1700, is an inferior version of a commonly known composition. There are comparable ivories and versions in the British Museum, in the Vatican Museum, the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City and there are wood groups in Brazil. They might depend from an Indo-Portuguese source. Clearly the composition was widely disseminated, perhaps through an engraved source. Goa was the second base in India to be established by the Portuguese, having been conquered by Alfonso de Albuquerque (about 1453-1515) during the reign of Manuel I of Portugal initially in 1510, and then reconquered in 1512.