Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

From the Museum of the Prado, a powerful Annunciation by El Greco, this one combining the Annunciation with Mary's title (and icon) in the Eastern Church, "Our Lady of the Burning Bush." An antiphon in the Evening Prayer for the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God (January 1) also sees the Burning Bush as a "type" or prophetic foreshadowing of Mary: "Your blessed and fruitful virginity is like the bush, flaming yet unburned, which Moses saw on Sinai. Pray for us, Mother of God." 

The Museum website offers extensive commentary on this work.

Image ©Museum of the Prado

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

On today's feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and in view of tomorrow's memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, perhaps El Greco's mysterious depiction of the Annunciation serves best. It abounds in mystery as Heaven opens up within Mary's room, just as the feasts of these two days abound in mystery.

Pondering the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

The unmistakeable work of Doménikos Theotokópoulos (El Greco)