Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Annunciation

As we enter Holy Week, sorrows are depicted in the mournful face and thorny roses of the 1927 Annonciation Douleureuse by Leon Frederic. (Mary has a rosary in her lap; maybe a hint for you and me to pray the Sorrowful Mysteries in a special way.)

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This Thursday is the Solemnity of the Annunciation, one of the two days in the year (the other is Christmas) when we genuflect at the words of the Creed: and was Incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. That matches well today's "liturgical" depiction of the Annunciation by Maurice Denis, who was just 18 years old when he painted Le Mystère Catholique. Read more about the piece and about the devout Catholic artist at The Art Story.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

From Instagram comes this modern Annunciation by a fellow Louisianian with a special interest in Theology of the Body, Blair Barlow!

The Annunciation is part of a four-piece altar set commissioned for a church in Rhode Island.

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Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Annunciation

This is a detail from an Ethiopian diptych of the life of the Virgin Mary, from the Annunciation to her Dormition (Assumption).

Mary, who is seated on a three-legged stool, is busily at work making thread. Gabriel appears at her right side with the message, while the Holy Spirit comes down in a white cloud. On the other side (Mary's upraised arm creating a nice division between two scenes), we find the very next story in the Gospel narrative, with Mary visiting her kinswoman Elizabeth.

As is traditional in Eastern icons, Mary is wearing a red dress, symbolic of her human nature, while she is enfolded in heavenly grace (blue). 

See the full two-page spread from the 17th century in great detail at the website of the National Museum of African Art.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

 

Another Annunciation by Allan Rohan Crite, this time a linoleum cut from 1947.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Continuing with Annunciations for Black History Month, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, here is the study for Henry Ossawa Tanner's brilliant 1898 Annunciation (featured several years ago on The Angelus Project):

Compare the study to the finished work:

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

For the beginning of Black History Month, an 1937 Annunciation by Boston artist, Allan Crite (†2007). Learn more about Crite and his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum website.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

From the Detroit Institute of Arts comes this very early (6th to 8th century) depiction of the Annunciation, not in fresco, mosaic or tapestry, but in metalwork: a bronze censer. It is presumed to be either Coptic (Egyptian) or Syrian in origin and workmanship, and is quite small by contemporary standards: only about 4 inches high! 

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This large piece (55 7/8 by 41 1/2 in.) by Alfred-Pierre Agache was shown at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. 

L'Annonciation, c. 1891

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This 1904 Annunciation by Vittorio Matteo Corcos seems to be of the "Annunciation at the Well" type, although the water jar is suspiciously small for household use.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Jacques Bellange did this etching (printed in black) in 1615 or 1616. From the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Detail from a 14th century German triptych in ivory. The lower image in the left-hand wing, the Annunciation measures about 4.5 inches high. From the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Annunciation by the Master of the Triptych, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

About the artist (from the Museum site):
This master is recognized as the enameler of a triptych with a central scene of the Annunciation flanked by donor portraits of Louis XII of France (1462–1515) and his queen, Anne de Bretagne (d. 1514), painted between 1499 and 1514. Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, that triptych is arguably the most beautiful early sixteenth-century Limoges enamel in existence. This plaque is a variant of the London triptych’s central panel.

Workshop of Master of the Triptych of Louis XII
(ca. 1490–ca. 1515)
Date: probably early 16th century
Culture: French, Limoges
Medium: Painted enamel on copper, partly gilt

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

With the return to Ordinary Time, we resume the weekly image of the Annunciation.

This bas-relief appears on the right side of the Cathedral (Duomo) of Florence. Photo by Sr. Sergia Ballini.

Praying the Regina Coeli with Art

Troparion: “Today is the beginning of our salvation, the revelation of the eternal mystery! The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin as the Angel Gabriel announces the coming of Grace. Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos: ‘Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!’” 

In honor of today's  Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, shifted from its traditional date of March 25 (Good Friday this year), the Angelus Project features both an Annunciation image and (since the Regina Coeli replaces the Angelus prayer during the Easter season),  this season's art with images of Mary as Queen, in particular, her Coronation.

The Annunciation by Mikhail Nesterov (1901)

 

The Coronation of the Virgin by Francisco Ribalta 

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Last week's image was by Rogier van der Weyden. Scholars see this work by Hans Memling (thought to be the left wing of a diptych), as based on a (strikingly similar) design by van der Weyden (Memling was a member of van der Weyden's workshop).
For more info, see the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

 

The only information I have on this splendid depiction of the Annunciation is that it is by Rogier Van der Weyden, and dated 1450. 

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This popular (and, at 5'7'', monumental) Annunciation is by Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Pineu Duval (more commonly known as Amaury-Duval), and was commissioned by the French government in 1856.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

The great Donatello sculpted this Annunciation in a dark stone called pietra serena, using gold leaf to brighten the scene. Originally for a family tomb, the piece now stands on its own in Florence's Church of the Holy Cross.
Photo by Sister Sergia Ballini.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

The bronze figures of Gabriel and the Virgin by Igor Mitorj are from the left-side door (completed only in 2005) of the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels and Martyrs in Rome (just beyond the Termini train station). The incomplete arms of both figures are the artist's homage to the state of the classical statues that had earlier been on display in a local museum.