Artistic Renderings of The Annunciation














Last week we revisited the two Gospel stories, in Luke 1:26-38 and Matthew 1:18-25, where the angel of God comes to speak to Mary and Joseph about God's plan.  In Mary's case, the angel reveals that young Mary will be the bearer of God's new life for the world, carrying and giving birth to the Son of God.  In Joseph's case, the angel intervenes when Joseph is temtped to quietly abandon Mary and the unborn child.  Joseph is en-couraged, and the two humble (and initially overwhelmed) people dedicate their lives in a remarkable faithfulness that can encourage us and stimulate our imaginations.

The renderings of the angel and Mary are from Collier, DaVinci, Nesterov, and Caravaggio. The one of the angel and Jospeh is unattributed.  Are there any of them that really engage your attention?  










Comments

  1. JessDecember 13, 2017 at 12:58 PM

    I particularly like the first one by Collier. It portrays Mary like a school girl and reminds us just how young and she was at that time. It also portrays her as ordinary. God comes to ordinary people to do extraordinary things!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Zack SantaiDecember 19, 2017 at 6:28 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Zack SantaiDecember 19, 2017 at 6:30 PM

    I noticed that in most of the pictures Mary or joesph have their eyes closed. In the ones that they don't have their eyes closed they seem mildly suprised. Overall there's not really too much emotion shown in these images although they stand for an event that was filled with emotion. I looked online and most renderings of the Annunciation
    show the same thing. I wonder why the artists chose to show this lack of emotion in their paintings for this important biblical event.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prayer

Image
"Prayer is acknowledging that we are always in the presence of God." -- Desmond Tutu "Prayer is the language of Christian community." --Henri Nouwen "Prayer is yearning, beseeching, beholding." --  Julian of Norwich "Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.  It presupposes faith and love.  Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." --Simone Weil
Read more

In Common

Image
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.  All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent time together in the temple, they broke bread at home  and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." --Acts 2:42-47  
Read more