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Jan van Eyck, Annunciation Netherlandish, ca. 1435 Washington DC, National Gallery of Art |
“And Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a
dove that dwelt there….. “ Protoevangelium of James: 8 1
The tradition that Mary spent time in the temple as a girl
and young woman comes from the Protoevangelium of James, one of the
numerous non-canonical or apocryphal books purporting to tell the story of
Christ, that came into being around the middle of the second century.
The Protoevangelium focused on the story of Mary, from her own birth through Herod’s massacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt. Though recognized as not being canonical quite early in the Church’s history, the Protoevangelium contains numerous stories that have worked their way into Christian culture over the centuries and that have provided many of the stories that have been illustrated by artists since the Middle Ages,
Among these stories are the traditions of Mary’s consecration to the service of God in the Temple as a girl and those surrounding St. Joseph’s choice as her husband-to-be.
The Protoevangelium focused on the story of Mary, from her own birth through Herod’s massacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt. Though recognized as not being canonical quite early in the Church’s history, the Protoevangelium contains numerous stories that have worked their way into Christian culture over the centuries and that have provided many of the stories that have been illustrated by artists since the Middle Ages,
Among these stories are the traditions of Mary’s consecration to the service of God in the Temple as a girl and those surrounding St. Joseph’s choice as her husband-to-be.
For this reason, many artists have shown the Annunciation as
happening in a large, imposing building or even a recognizable church, which is
the artist’s way of placing Mary in the setting of the Temple.
The theme seems to have become popular during the late Middle Ages. Mostly, artists have imagined the Temple as something with which they were familiar -- a church.
The theme appears to have developed most obviously in Northern Europe and the structures which were imagined were the Gothic cathedrals of the north.
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| Mazarine Master, Annunciation from Hours of Phillippe the Good, also called the Hours of Joseph Bonaparte French (Paris), c. 1400-1425 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Latin 10538, fol. 31 |
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| Boucicaut Master, Annunciation from Hours of Jeanne Bessonnelle French (Paris), c. 1400-1425 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Latin 1161, fol. 31 |
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| Annunciation from a Book of Hours French (Rouen), 1450-1500 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Nouvelle acquisition latine 3134, fol. 25r |
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| Jean Fouquet, Annunciation from Hours of Etienne Chevalier French, (Tours), 1452-1460 Chantilly, Musée Condé MS. 71 |
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| Petrus Christus, Annunciation Flemish, 1452 Bruges, Groeninge Museum |
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| Master of Charles of France, Annunciation Two Leaves from Hours of Charles of France French (Paris), 1465 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters |
Mary may appear at the entrance of the building or she may be seen inside the body of the church, which is usually indicated by the inclusion of an altar, sometimes with a priest seen standing there.
Although these are to be understood as the Temple, they are, in all practical terms, churches in which the Catholic liturgy can take place and where it may actually be taking place at the same time as the artist is showing us the Annunciation event. This juxtaposition ties past time with present time, the Annunciation of Christ’s birth in the flesh through the human body of Mary with the transformation of the ordinary materials of bread and wine into His Sacramental Body and Blood on the altar.
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| Master of the Hartford Annunciation, Annunciation French, c. 1480 Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum |
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Matthias Grünwald, Annunciation
German, 1515
Colmar, Musée d'Unterlinden
|
Although these are to be understood as the Temple, they are, in all practical terms, churches in which the Catholic liturgy can take place and where it may actually be taking place at the same time as the artist is showing us the Annunciation event. This juxtaposition ties past time with present time, the Annunciation of Christ’s birth in the flesh through the human body of Mary with the transformation of the ordinary materials of bread and wine into His Sacramental Body and Blood on the altar.
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| Jean Bourdichon, Annunciation from Hours of Frederic d'Aragon French (Tours), 1501-1504 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Latin 10532, fol. 16 |
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| Jean Bourdichon, Annunciation from Grandes Heures of Anne de Bretagne French (Tours), 1503-1508 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Latin 9474, fol. 26v |
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| Noel Bellemare and Workshop, Annunciation Leaf from a Book of Hours French, c. 1530-1535 Cleveland, Museum of Art |
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| Maertan van Heemskerck, Annunciation Dutch, 1546 Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum |
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| Paris Bordone, Annunciation Italian, 1545-1550 Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts |
It was made explicit in Veronese’s painting at San Sebastiano in Venice by the inclusion of spiraling columns, known as Solomonic columns, because they were believed to duplicate the columns that stood in Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem.
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Paolo Veronese, Annunciation
Italian, 1558
Venice, Church of San Sebastiano These columns from the Temple were believed to be identical with spiral columns that were given by Constantine to St. Peter’s basilica at the time of its construction in the fourth century to surround the still visible tomb of St. Peter. These columns are still kept there today, though not in their original location. Their form was the direct inspiration for the four enormous bronze columns, designed by Bernini and completed in 1633, that currently support the baldacchino over the main altar of the “new” St. Peter’s.2
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| Gianlorenzo Bernini, Baldacchino of St. Peter's Basilica Italian, Completed 1633 Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica |
Artists continued to create works that placed the Annunciation to Mary in the Temple context, right up to recent times.
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| Alonso Cano, Annunciation Spanish, 1655-1657 Castres, Musée Goya |
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| Mathieu Le Nain, Annunciation French, c. 1660 Autun, Musée Rolin |
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| Joseph Rogues, Annunciation French, 1815 Toulouse, Musée des Augustins |
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| Charles Lorin, Annunciation French, 1910-1914 New York, Church of St. Jean Baptiste |
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George Hawley Hallowell, Annunciation
American, Before 1926
Boston, Fogg Museum
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Another development in this theme appears in a handful of pictures that show Mary in the Temple, wearing some of the vestments of a Catholic priest or acting in the place of a priest. 3
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Boucicaut Master, Annunciation
from Book of Hours
French, 1415-1425
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 1000, fol. 33r
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Instead of seeing her in remote proximity to the altar, at which the priest stands, she may be seen at the altar or lectern acting as a liturgical minister in her own right.
Again, this is a conflation of past and present. She is seen as uniting the two moments and actions, the Incarnation and the Consecration.
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| Master of the Aix Annunciation, Annunciation French, 1445 Aix-en-Provence, Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine |
To Be Continued
© M. Duffy, 2015
______________________________________________________
1. Translated by Alexander Walker. From Ante-Nicene
Fathers, Vol. 8. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson,
and A. Cleveland Coxe, Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.
Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin
Knight.
2. J.B. Ward-Perkins,
“The Shrine of St. Peter and Its Twelve Spiral Columns” in The Journal of
Roman Studies, Vol. 42, Parts 1 and 2, 1952, pp. 21-33.
3. Anne L. Clark,
“The Priesthood of the Virgin Mary:
Gender Trouble in the Twelfth Century”, Journal of Feminist Studies in
Religion, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 5-24.
The Veronese Annunciation is in the Basilica Ssnti Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo) on the ceiling in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in Venice San Salvador has a Titian Annunciation shown elseewhere in this site.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent site on the subject.