Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

On this Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, only Tiepolo's dramatic Annunciation will do. It appears to depict not the moment of the angel's arrival so much as the moment of departure, when the Word had just taken on flesh in Mary's womb and Gabriel bowed to the earth in adoration before the newly Incarnate One he had always adored at the right hand of the Father.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Gérard Edelinck prepared this engraving after one by Nicolas Poussin (see last week's image!). The Edelinck engraving is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Nicholas Poussin's 1627 (or 1641?) Annunciation has been surpassed in the Internet Imagination by his 1657 work (in fact, it was a challenge to track this image down!), but it has its own classic loveliness. (Come back next week to see a later image based on this one.) The original is in the Condé Museum in the château de Chantilly.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This no-frills Annunciation fits all the standard features in the space of an initial M from an illuminated manuscript (an Antiphonary)! It seems that the image (in tempera and gold leaf) was cut from its original setting.

From the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.