Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Detail from the Golden Legend
Huntington Digital Library

Another manuscript of the Golden Legend gives us this week's Annunciation, in a book described by the Huntington Digital Library in great detail:

Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea written in France, perhaps in Paris, during the next to the last decade of the thirteenth century. Manuscript in England by the third or certainly the last quarter of the fourteenth century, to judge by the script of the note added on f. 11v, correcting the king's name from "Edmundus" to "Edwardus." .... Written by two scribes in a gothic book hand....  Written instructions to the illuminator are present for approximately one third of the miniatures; they tend to be more complex and closer to the text than the resulting miniature. Rudimentary sketches, or evidence of sketches, for the miniatures occur in about one quarter of the cases; a number of miniatures have both the written directions and the preliminary sketch. Other Decoration: Major initials, 9- to 7-line, in dull pink or blue, patterned in white against a cusped ground of the other color, infilling in a darker shade of the same color as the initial, with grotesque or leaf forms decorated with burnished gold, and marginal extensions. Initials, 4-line, to introduce the Etymologia of similar style; secondary initials, 2-line, alternating red and blue with flourishes of the other color. Line fillers in the shape of mice, the same as the decoration on the catchwords. Carefully corrected throughout by the scribe of the text, corrections in yellow boxes. Some marginalia in various hands up to 16th century. Input into Digital Scriptorium by: C. W. Dutschke, 8/2/2012. Cataloged from existing description: C. W. Dutschke with the assistance of R. H. Rouse et al., Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1989). Bound in original[?] oak boards, quarter backed in modern mottled calf; remains of 2 fore edge straps of pink leather closing to pins on the center back; flyleaves, washed, contained a 15th century prose text in French in 2 columns, written in a Bâtarde script.

 See the whole page (in fact, peruse the manuscript!) on the site of the Huntington Digital Library!

 

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 a Book of Hours for the Gualengo family, this Annunciation page faced the opening words of the office of Matins of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Angel's "Ave" appears above the scene; beneath, in a frame nesting between the tails of two peacocks, one of the family mottoes: Where God is, there is Peace and Love.

Read more from the Getty Museum of Art.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Happy New Year!

To help you begin the year praying the Angelus three times a day, here is the first of many Annunciation images for you.

I am sorry I cannot find this 15th century illumination where I originally discovered it: The Walters Art Museum. I can read in the text is "Beautiful Mother" and "We praise you...for seven joys." Presumably this is from a private owner's Book of Hours, which often contained private devotions in addition to the liturgical texts of the Office.

Pondering the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This lovely page from a Book of Hours was illustrated by Jean Bourdichon of Tours, who illuminated manuscripts for French royalty throughout his long and active life. Gabriel's pose is surprising. Perhaps the message has already been delivered in full and the angel awaits Mary's response?

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Gift of Peter Sharrer, 2004).

Pondering the Angelus with Art: An Islamic-influenced Annunciation

This page from a 15th century Gospel book hails from the Lake Van region of Turkey. You can probably recognize the Islamic influence on the artist. The book was not only treasured, but actively used for centuries, as attested by the marginal notations throughout. 

For more about this remarkable depiction, see the Flickr page of the Walters Museum of Art.

Pondering the Angelus with the Angels

Today is the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the three heavenly messengers who are identified by name in the Bible. While Michael is represented in the Old and New Testaments as a princely defender of God's people, and Raphael (in the Old Testament book of Tobit) as the companion of wayfarers and bringer of remedies, Gabriel's role in Old and New Testament is that of helping humans grasp a message from God. (Gabriel is also considered a divine messenger within Islam.) The three messengers are called "archangels" by Catholic tradition not because of their rank among the angels, but because of the high status of their mission.

The Annunciation story allows the artist to release all of his or her imagination in depicting the status of the message Gabriel was sent to bring. In Simon Bening's depiction, Gabriel, as well as Mary, is under the radiance of the Holy Spirit. The archangel wears a crown and bears a staff or scepter, and his magnificent cope is upheld in the front by a small angel, with a whole team of small angels bearing the train! He approaches Mary from on high, from a raised area at least two steps above the ground floor where her chair, bench and knitting are situated. The setting is both a temple (and the "glory of the Lord filled the Temple" as in Solomon's day) and a home, where Mary has her knitting basket and favorite chair.

Although Mary, intent in her meditation, does not see all the angelic magnificence that is approaching, we at least are primed for a very significant message: "Hail, Full of Grace! The Lord is with Thee!"

Bening Annunciation
Simon Bening, illuminator (Flemish, about 1483 - 1561)
The Annunciation, about 1525 - 1530, Tempera colors, gold paint, and gold leaf on parchment
Leaf: 16.8 x 11.4 cm (6 5/8 x 4 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. Ludwig IX 19, fol. 13v