Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

In this image from the National Gallery of Art, the Annunciation forms the center of a four-panel work by Cosmè Tura (the left panel features St Francis of Assisi; the right the young Franciscan bishop St Louis of Toulouse). The four figures are set in a mountainous area at dawn (presumably; the Incarnation was the first "dawning" of the light of redemption on our sin-weary world).

Pondering the Angelus with Art: A Holy Week Annunciation

Monday of Holy Week. Today's image presages the events we will commemorate in the Liturgy later this week. For not only does Gabriel genuflect before the Virgin as he delivers the divine message; not only does Mary listen calmly and receptively; not only does God the Father look benignly down from his supernatural dwelling: a tiny, naked boy-child is running toward Mary from the heavenly realm, already carrying a cross.

The painting is by Giovanni Santi, a noted 15th century Italian artist in his own right,  but eclipsed in fame by his son, Raphael. The work is kept in Raphael's hometown of Urbino.

The Annunciation, by Giovanni Santi (1490)

Thursday noon will be the last time we traditionally pray the Angelus until Ordinary Time resumes. After the Easter Vigil Mass (Saturday evening), we burst into the "Regina Coeli" (Queen of Heaven, rejoice!), which takes the place of the Angelus throughout Easter.

Pondering the Angelus with Art

Many of the outdoor Marian shrines in Italy depict the Annunciation. This is an example from Assisi, where the spirit of joy matches well this prayer by Jean Galot: "O Mary, who received from God the deepest joy, help us to live in true joy, the joy of Christ."




Photo by Sr Irma Cipriani, FSP.

Pondering the Angelus with Art

In these final days of Advent, Gabriel appears to be informing all of us of an unexpected and earth-changing event.

Contemporary Italian artist Bruno Grassi gave Sr Sergia permission to photograph his version of the Annunciation. Grassi's goal in sacred art is to create a work that makes a person "want to pray." His work frequently depicts Mary, and angels (winged or wingless, as Gabriel is here) are also common. But could you tell that this was an Annunciation if not for the title? What other insights might the painting offer before you told someone what the artist's inspiration really was?




Photo of Bruno Grassi's Annunciation by Sr Sergia Ballini, FSP; taken with the artist's permission.

Pondering the Angelus

Today's Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception invites us to contemplate the Angelus in the great arc of salvation history. The Archangel Gabriel was sent to Nazareth to announce that God was about to fulfill the promise he had made in the Garden of Eden: "I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, between your offspring and hers..." Gabriel's words reveal that Mary is the new Eve; Paul will call her son the "second Adam," the first member of a renewed humanity.

This remarkable depiction of the Annunciation reminds us of the whole sad story of Adam and Eve; we see the Angel pushing them, naked, out of the garden, a garden that becomes a time machine, since Mary's open house is set right amidst the grass and flowers and scampering rabbits, a reminder that Mary, conceived without sin and clothed in grace, is the new Garden of Paradise. In the upper left corner, God the Father, surrounded by glory, seems to be both repeating his promise for our first parents to hear while at the same time sending the Holy Spirit upon Mary. (Rare is the Renaissance Annunciation that does not feature God the Father in some way, keeping a strong Trinitarian faith before our eyes.)

Praying in the spirit of today's feast of the sinless Virgin, we can consider Mary's response to the Angelic message not only an immediate reply to the mission held out to her, but her response to God the Father for having readied her from the first instant of her life for this mission. "Be it done to me!"

Giovanni di Paolo, The Annunciation and the Expulsion from Paradise
Samuel H Kress Collection,  National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art website includes this commentary:

Giovanni di Paolo's Annunciation is believed to be one of five predella panels that belonged to the lower portion of a large, as yet unidentified, Sienese altarpiece. The central area of the panel shows the most important part of the painted narrative -- the Archangel Gabriel announcing the impending birth of the Christ Child to the Virgin Mary. Outside her elegant Italian Gothic house, a lush garden reflects the spring season of the Annunciation. The fertile landscape also provides an appropriate setting for the secondary representation at the left -- Adam and Eve's dramatic expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Giovanni used the figure of God the Father, who occupies the celestial realm in the upper left corner, to link the Expulsion to the Annunciation. God both points out the exiled couple's disgrace and looks ahead toward the Annunciation in anticipation of divine redemption. Finally, at the right, Joseph warms his hands at a fireplace, symbolic of Jesus' future birth in the winter.

Disregarding naturalistic detail in favor of flat, decorative pattern, Giovanni was nevertheless aware of current Renaissance experiments in linear perspective, as exemplified by the receding floor tiles in both the central loggia and Joseph's cubicle. The artist's decision, however, not to follow realistic spatial and scale relationships completely, and his use of willowy, elegantly dressed figures, place him firmly within the medieval pictorial tradition, now reappearing as the International Style.

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.