Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

One more from il Guercino and then we'll move on! This unique Annunciation is from a rather unique collection:  The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL. It was a bequest of John Ringling, of, yes, the Ringling Brothers, to the city of Sarasota. An explanation of the piece by one of the former museum docents can also be found online.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Going with a theme here, another Annunciation by il Guercino (the Squinter); this one from the Royal Collection Trust. The museum notes say that the study was originally "Prometheus bringing life to a clay statue with a burning torch," which il Guercino erased and replaced with this lovely image.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Following up on last week's Guercino, here is another stupendous Annunciation by the same northern Italian artist. Note that it has the same basic features as last week's image: Mary, praying peacefully beneath a super-active Heavenly realm. In this scene, Gabriel is hovering from a different direction than in last week's image. Ken Clark offers a reflection on the scene in the journal of The Augustine Institute.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

You'd never know from looking at il Guercino's 1646 masterpiece that the artist was a largely self-taught painter nicknamed "Squint-eye." His eye seems to have been as exquisite as his technique!

Guercino, like many artists of his day, was called upon to create a number of Annunciations. But in more than one he offered a unique perspective: All the action is going on in Heaven, while on earth, Mary is as yet unaware of the way her life (and ours!) is about to change.


Having worked for months on the 2015 restoration of the Guercio Annunciation, restorer Licia Tasini gives us a sense of the size of the painting.