Anna Pani was a prominent painter who lived in Florence during the 15th century. She is best known for portraying female natures in her paintings. One of her famous works, The Madonna and Child with Two Saints, depicts the relationship between the Virgin Mary and the Virgin Jesus. One of the reasons for her association with the nativity scene was that she was from a modest background and she desired to express the joys of her birth as well as her feelings about her status as a noble woman. As a result, she painted this oil painting in order to support the Catholic Church’s teachings against adultery.
Anna Pani is believed to be of Italian descent because she mentioned in one of her manuscripts that she was born in Palermo (Bayernese pronunciation: “PAI”). There is no indication that she revealed anything about her native origin or nationality. However, there is reason to suspect that she might have been of Italian descent through her descent from an Italian family, as both her mother and father were highly educated and skilled craftsmen who could all have been Italian.
Anna Pani did not write extensively on nationality, but she did provide one reference in her The Madonna and Child with Two Saints. In this manuscript, she refers to herself as “a woman of thirty years of age” and has hair that is “not curly nor long.” Anna Pani also had dark hair and wore bangs which match her green-colored dress. There is no evidence that she ever married, and it appears that her most intimate paintings predate the discovery of her grave.