Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

From the early 1300's comes this carved section of a Spanish Gothic altarpiece, the work of noted sculptor Jaume Cascalls.

Annunciation in alabaster by Jaume Cascalls (altarpiece fragment)
Permanent loan from the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona
to the Museu Provincial d'Antiguitats, 1879
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This tiny Annunciation unfolds within an initial D in an early 14th century French manuscript that gives more attention to the decorative aspects than to the Latin text it surrounds. From the Walters Museum of Art.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

From the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom:

It is truly meet and right to bless you, O Theotokos,

Ever blessed and most pure, and the Mother of our God.

More honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim,

Without defilement you gave birth to God the Word.

True Theotokos, we magnify you!

Follower of the Boucicaut Master (French, active about 1390 - 1430)

Pondering the Angelus with Art

The Annunciation, by Lorenzo Maitani; from the facade of the Cathedral of Orvieto.

Pondering the Angelus with Art

In this lovely image by Tommaso del Mazza, we see something that is typical and atypical at the same time. Typically for Annunciations in this era, God the Father is depicted in a heavenly realm--here in a "mandorla" formed of Seraphim. But this is no bust of an elderly ruler; it is a virile figure that can remind the viewer of no one but Jesus, "the perfect reflection of the Father's being." That it is, in fact, the Father (and not his Word and Image) may be reinforced by the halo, in which there is no hint of the cross.




Tommaso del Mazza (Master of St. Verdiana) (Italian, active 1377 - 1392)
The Annunciation, about 1390 - 1395, Tempera and gold leaf on panel
Unframed: 128.3 x 92.1 cm (50 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.)
Framed: 158.1 x 105.4 x 11.4 cm (62 1/4 x 41 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Pondering the Angelus with Art

In the Cathedral of Verona, Italy, a fourteenth century Annunciation appears in a most fitting place: the ambo from which the Word of God is proclaimed. In its liturgical setting, the bas-relief invites us to hear the Word of God with the attentiveness and availability of Mary.

Photo by Sr Sergia Ballini, FSP.