Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This week's image dates between 1615 and 1620. The Wikipedia article about the history St Paul's in Antwerp, founded and then re-founded by the Dominicans, is well worth reading. This week's Annunciation (by Hendrick van Balen) is part of that interesting history:

In 1623, the painting Madonna of the Rosary by Caravaggio arrived in Antwerp probably via the Dutch market. On the initiative of some artists, among whom Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder, the painting was donated as altarpiece to the St. Paul’s Church. Rubens organized the leading Antwerp painters to make a series of 15 paintings on the theme of the "Mystery of the Rosary Cycle" to flank the Caravaggio painting. In 1786, Emperor Joseph II of Austria, after ordering the closing of all ‘useless’ monastic orders, claimed the painting of Caravaggio for his art collection. 

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Michael Angelo Immenraet painted this image on canvas in the 1670's. It appears to be behind some structural works; a visit to the website (unionskirche-retten.de) only indicated that the church's fundraising efforts had been successful. Hopefully they will update their website soon with information about its artwork!

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

There is no hint of the Cross (today's great Feast) in today's vibrant Annunciation by Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574-1625), but as Mary "ponders in her heart" the many prophecies in the Scripture, she will come to grasp that the Son of David conceived in her "must suffer and so enter into his glory" (see Luke 24:26).

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

As far as I have been able to tell, this Annunciation is by Margaret A. Rope, a British Carmelite nun (Sister Margaret of the Mother of God) whom Wikipedia identifies as a "stained glass artist in the Arts and Crafts movement tradition active in the first four decades of the 20th century. Her work is notable for the intensity and skill of the painting and the religious fervour underpinning it." 

Margaret was one of six children whose widowed mother had recently converted to Catholicism. Two of the girls entered religious life, while one son became a priest. Margaret herself had a flourishing career as an artist (specializing in Church commissions) before entering Carmel, and she continued to create stained glass for the windows of the monastic church (which her cousin, the artist Margaret Edith Rope were making). After World War II her health declined to the point where she could no longer continue artwork. She died in 1953 at age 71.

Visit the Wikipedia listing of Margaret A Rope for a fuller biography and samples of her striking stained glass work.