The Angelus Project: Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Sunday, March 6, 2022

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This week's Annunciation is by Pere Serra (1404) and is in the Pinacoteca di Brera, an art gallery of Milan. According to the museum website: "This work is by a Spanish artist who worked in Catalonia in the latter half of the 14th century but was also active in Sardinia. It shows the Annunciation to Mary by the angel in a beautiful purple robe in a way that almost disappears after the Council of Trent (1545-63)... The pictorial space is cramped: the vase of lilies, probably alluding to the virginity of Mary, seems to spill out towards us."

A Marian antiphon often prayed at the end of Night Prayer, Alma Redemptoris Mater ends, "you who received Gabriel's joyful greeting, have pity on us poor sinners."

Here's my favorite musical version of that prayer, one I encountered in my first semester of college:

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About the Angelus Project

We rightly admire Muslim neighbors and co-workers who put everything on hold five times a day in answer to the "call to prayer." But Christians have a call to prayer, too! It is the Angelus. Morning, noon and evening we are invited to pause and reaffirm our faith in the Incarnation: The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (Jn. 1:14), because "God so loved the world that he sent his only Son" (Jn. 3:16).
The Angelus Project is a personal project of Sister Anne Flanagan, FSP, a Daughter of St Paul. Find out more about the media ministry of the Daughters of St Paul at DaughtersofStPaul.com.