Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

We close the year with an unusual Annunciation, this one in a fragment of tapestry from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, used under the
Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Bicci di Lorenzo (1373-1452) provides this week's image in two panels, each 25.1" by 12.5".

Merry Christmas!

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Halfway through Advent we have another Annunciation from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (worth seeing in full resolution on the museum website; follow the link). According to the museum notes, this 25.5 X 15" painting, which is in the chapel, is  "probably [from] southern Germany, 1450-1550, by a 'rough provincial hand'; the composition was derived from Michael Wolegmut's altar in Church of the Holy Cross, Nuremberg."

("Rough provincial hand"?!)
From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, used under
the Creative Commons License
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

 Happy New Year!

I am grateful to Bishop Daniel Flores (of Brownsville, TX), for providing this lovely Annunciation through his Twitter feed on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (when Luke's narrative was the Gospel for Mass)! It dates to about 1587  by Andrés de la Concha and is found in Tamazulapan, Oaxaca, México, where he was commissioned for it as part of a major project.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

The painter Piermatteo da Amelia (Amelia is a town in Umbria) "is also known as the Master of the Gardner Annunciation for a series of works depicting the Annunciation which were painted for the convent of Saints Annunziata and Amelia; in 1880 these came into the possession of Isabella Stewart Gardner, from whom the name comes. The anonymous painter was identified when the contract for the work was discovered in Terni; it indicated that Piermatteo da Amelia was contracted for the paintings on September 23, 1483."

View a high-resolution image of Piermatteo Annunciation on the website of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; it is much lovelier than this tiny jpg can convey.

Public Service Announcement: Tomorrow, December 8, is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a Holy Day of Obligation in the United States). Find the Church nearest you.