Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke,
shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

This stunning image is best seen expanded to as full a size as your screen can accommodate. It is from the Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio ("The Martorana"), Palermo, Sicily. Dr Richard Strake (of ChristianIconography.info) explains that this image, so strongly Byzantine in its form, incorporates several Western elements, since it was executed by an Orthodox official for a Catholic ruler. Learn more about the image on the Christian Iconography website.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This Annunciation is part of an 15th century altarpiece in a parish church in Austria. It was photographed by Dr Richard Stracke and shared on his Christian Iconography website. He notes: "It is in the 15th century that artists begin to include in the background quotidian details that nevertheless bear symbolic value. In this case, the sand in the hourglass has nearly finished its time, a reference to the approaching end of the Old Law."

Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke,
shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.    

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This frescoed Annunciation is composed of two images in the apse of the Church of San Salvador, Villar das Donas, Spain. Gabriel and the Virgin are separated by a window.

Dr Richard Stracke of ChristianIconography.info explains what makes this 14th or 15th century Annunciation unique:
Traditional Annunciations picture the moment of Incarnation, when the Son of God became human and "the Word was made flesh" (John 1:5). They signify the Incarnation by picturing a dove flying to Mary on a sunbeam from Heaven. But the San Salvador fresco departs from the tradition and presents a moment after the Incarnation. There is no dove, no sunbeam. Mary is already what the inscription proclaims her, mater dei, the Mother of God. Her left hand touches her swelling abdomen, where the Word now dwells, and her right hand points to sacred scripture, that other manifestation of the Word. She holds that hand in the traditional blessing configuration, in which the index and middle fingers pressed together signify the union of God and Man that has just occurred. Her crown, which does not appear in other Annunciations, speaks to her new dignity as God's mother.   

The frescoes in their architectural context.

Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke;
all images shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Continuing to draw from the resources at ChristianIconography.info (where you can also find a larger image), The Angelus Project presents this Annunciation from late 18th century Mexico (today found in the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York City). It is on a "nun's badge."

Dr Richard Stracke explains:
Mary kneels on a carpeted dais in front of a book on a small table, rather than at a prie-dieu. This and the angel's entry from the right are unusual for this period, so it may be that the badges reflect actual practice among the Mexican nuns.

The secondary figures are, clockwise from the top: The Trinity, Unidentified saint, St. Anthony of Padua (tonsure, Franciscan habit, Christ Child in arms), St. Francis of Assisi (Franciscan habit, stigmata), two unidentified friars, unidentified woman saint, unidentified nun (pen, book), St. Gertrude of Helfta, unidentified saint, unidentified martyr (armor, palm, crucifix), St. Hyacinth (monstrance, Madonna and Child) unidentified saint (cruciform banner, Dominican habit), St. Nicholas of Tolentino (sunburst on chest).

Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke,

shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.    

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

The green vestments at this morning's Mass tell us that Ordinary Time has resumed, and with it, the praying of the Angelus after 7 weeks of the Regina Coeli. For the next few weeks, our Annunciations will be drawn from those featured on the fascinating Christian Iconography website where you may find yourself lost for hours investigating the way the faith has been encoded in art through the ages. Many thanks to Dr Richard Stracke for this resource!)

This first Annunciation is a modern-day tribute to the Annunciations of the medieval era; a detail from a 1950's stained glass window in Munich, Germany.

Photographed by Richard Stracke,
shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.