Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This is the "Martelli Annunciation" by the famous Fra Filippo Lippi; you can find the original in its home, the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

As summer approaches its close (at least here in Boston!), we feature an outdoor Annunciation from a Rosary walk at Casa Divin Maestro, the Pauline retreat house overlooking Italy's Lake Albano.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Go to the Rijksmuseum website to see this spare image in its glorious full resolution. The website explains that Adriaen van de Velde "probably painted this picture for a clandestine Catholic church in Amsterdam" in 1667.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This immense 1469 Annunciation by Cosimo Tura from the Ferrara Cathedral Museum measures 11.4 feet high by 10 feet wide.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

I'm sorry I don't have information on this Annunciation other than its name as the Annunciation of the Master of Heiligenkreuz (Holy Cross). It is unusual not only in the angular severity of the figures (and in Gabriel's delivery of a sealed message!), but in the way the small angels (behind and above Mary's head) seem to be working on the masonry around her, as well as in the Apostles (?) looking the other way: Paul with his sword and bald head is pretty identifiable, but who is his companion with the book? Could it be Luke, who wrote the Annunciation story for us, and was the traveling companion of Paul?