Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Takato Yasamoto is a contemporary Japanese artist whose work mostly seems to tend toward the fantasy-macabre (as in: a lot of zombie/cadaver/vampire themes). The writing in the upper right corner translates to "holy message" or "Annunciation." 

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

The Binghamton University Art Museum holds this Annunciation by northern Italian artist Giuseppe Bernardino Bison (1762-1844). It's a relatively small piece on paper, done in ink and brown wash.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Tomorrow is, by tradition, Valentine's Day. According to the Roman liturgical calendar, it is the Feast of Sts Cyril and Methodius, the Apostles to the Slavic peoples, co-patrons of Europe, and creators of the alphabet that evolved into the fittingly named Cyrillic alphabet. 

Father Marko Rupnik, himself a descendant of those who were first evangelized by Cyril and Methodius, created a mosaic for the Aletti Center in Olomouc (Czech Republic) that connects the two missionaries' work of evangelization to the Annunciation. The mosaic as a whole takes the form of a great, open book (bringing to mind, of course, the Word of God). The blue ribbon that crosses through the the whole is the bookmark!

© Centro Aletti - Lipa Edizioni

According the official description:

At the hour of the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel opened the book on the page of the fullness of time.

That moment was the beginning of a process which meant that the Word was no longer merely heard, but, thanks to the Mother of God who gave it flesh, also contemplated in the face of the Son of God, the Word made flesh. For this reason, the human word, whether written or spoken, is never trivial for Christians. Indeed, the baptism of a people an inseparable unity is created between the language of that people and the Good News.

In this regard, the testimony of Saints Cyril and Methodius is of particular importance. As they traveled through the Moravian lands, they "kneaded" the people of this land with the Lord and manifested a newness also in the vision of the Church, in the communion of cultures and peoples baptized, in valuing the languages of the peoples.

The Aletti Center (originally a study and research center for the Pontifical Oriental Institute) is a public association of the faithful, linked to the Diocese of Rome. It especially serves Christian artists and scholars from Central and Eastern Europe as "a community that studies the impact between the Christian faith and the cultural dynamics of our time, taking into account the Christian traditions of East and West, so that together we can point to the living Christ."

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This week's Annunciation is a splendid painting by the 16th century Italian artist Benvenuto Tisi, better known as "Garofalo" (the name of his hometown). I urge you to visit the Google Art Project page for this masterpiece, so that you can not only see it in high definition, but learn some of the amazing details that are hidden in it.