Paintings for our times: The Annunciation, Domenico Veneziano, 1447
Wednesday, 25th March 2020: Lady Day (the Feast of the Annunciation)
As we all sit here in our splendid isolation we have a rare chance for reflection, for meditation, a chance to read and to consider where we are in our lives, protected from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Who knows – there might be a cathartic moment in all this, a moment of self-realisation.
Could it be that in this splendid isolation, we come out of it all a different person, with another perspective on life? Yes, of course. . . it’s all possible.
But whatever happens… nothing, nothing quite as overwhelmingly cathartic and as life changing as the scene we see in today’s painting will happen to us. For this young woman in her isolation, in her walled garden behind a firmly bolted door, her life is about to change forever.
What we are witnessing here is the fulfilment of a prophecy made in the Book of Isaiah (7,14) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible:
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
The Gospel of St Luke (1:26-38) describes what’s going on in this scene. (Theologians will spot that I have paraphrased the full text but hopefully that hasn’t changed the meaning.)
“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
To a virgin who was espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
And the angel said unto her, fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shall bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.
Then Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her,
The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.
And the angel departed from her. ”
The painting was originally part of a much larger altarpiece containing several other individual elements (polyptych) which was placed above the high altar of the church of Santa Lucia de’ Magnoli in Florence. Our panel is the central part of the predella, the band of five small paintings which run along the bottom of the main panel or pala.
The full Veneziano polyptch, originally an altarpiece in
Santa Lucia de’ Magnoli in Florence, is now on display in the Uffizzi Gallery.
The Annunciation is at the bottom in the central panel.
Despite its small size (27cm x 54cm), there is much symbolic imagery on display in this single panel. The lilies that are often found in Annunciation scenes usually refer to Mary's virginity and spiritual purity. The lily was also the symbol of the city of Florence where the altarpiece stood which, in the 15th century, celebrated the New Year on March 25th, the feast day of the Annunciation.
Mary's virginity is symbolised in a number of other ways. Through the arch on Veneziano's panel we see a garden enclosed by a wall, with a locked gate at the very centre. The enclosed garden - usually referred to by the Latin hortus conclusus - was a common motif in medieval art.
The locked door - porta clausa - likewise refers to Mary's purity. To really emphasis the spiritual significance of the bolted door (symbolising virginity), the ‘vanishing point’ of the picture (the point where the lines of perspective (orthogonals) converge is in the middle of the door. It is both the optical and spiritual locus of the painting.
You may have noticed that the Angel and the Virgin are not particularly close to each other – no problem with a failure to social distance here! It was another important symbolic feature of representations of the Annunciation where the space that exists between the two characters is explicit; there’s no need for a strip of tape every two metres to keep them apart!
Gabriel comes to the Virgin with a sense of openness suggestive of the divine and infinite. On the other hand, she occupies a specific ‘enclosed’ space symbolic of her finite earthliness. This ‘social distancing’ (or, should I say, ‘spiritual distancing’) is quite subtle in Veneziano’s painting. Gabriel kneels in the open courtyard while the Virgin remains in the shelter of the covered loggia (colonnade). He is some three or four metres apart from her.
There are other depictions of the Annunciation where the symbolic importance of the space that separates the divine from the human is more explicit. This is taken to the extreme in Piertro di Miniato’s Annunciation (c.1400) in the basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where a wall actually separates the pair. She is enclosed in a safe-space sanctum while the Archangel Gabriel, outside, communicates through the brickwork… leaving the message on the doorstep, as it were.
The divine nature of the ‘outside’ in this painting is emphasised by the fact that also on the outside is God the Father, overseeing the whole event just above and behind the Angel… the only intruder in the Virgin’s space is the Holy Spirit, the small white dove in front of her face.
The peace and tranquillity of Veneziano’s painting, the softness of the light and the overarching harmony of the composition all contribute to a mood of reflection and meditation.
And as I sit here writing this, the normally busy Arbury Road in Chesterton is devoid of traffic… all I can hear is birdsong and all I can see from the upstairs window are rows of enclosed gardens all springing into life.
