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| Workshop of Goossen van der Weyden, The Visitation Flemish, c.1516 London, National Gallery |
“During those days Mary set out and traveled
to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah and
greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the
infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most
blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me, that the
mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting
reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed that what was
spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
Luke 1:39-45
Mary’s visit
to her relative, Elizabeth, shortly after having given her assent to God’s
request that she give birth to Jesus, is the event that we call the Visitation,
the second decade of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. Most of us are most familiar with the central
portion of Luke’s account of the visit, in which Elizabeth acknowledges Mary’s
status and adds the second phrase of the Hail Mary prayer “and blessed is the
fruit of your womb” to the first part, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is
with you”, which is the way in which the Angel Gabriel greeted Mary. The remaining essays that will look at the
iconography of the Visitation will focus on these few lines and on the ways in
which artists have represented the words of the text visually.
The first
variation on the simple greeting (which we looked at here) is the motif of the
kneeling Elizabeth. Although the words
of Saint Luke do not indicate any kind of movement for Elizabeth, it is easy to
imagine her raising her hands, or holding out her arms, or even kneeling to
acknowledge “the mother of my Lord”.
It does not
seem to have been until the fourteenth century that artists began to deviate
from the simple greeting motif, in which the women met as equals, generally in
a standing posture. The earliest image I
have found in which Elizabeth kneels comes from around 1380, and is attributed to the
Master of the Parement de Narbonne, an altar frontal commissioned by King
Charles V of France, now in the Louvre.
The manuscript comes from the library of that great manuscript
connoisseur, the Prince Jean, Duc de Berry, the man who commissioned the famous
Tres Riches Heures and many
other books besides. So, the work in
question is a luxury manuscript, produced for an influential, highly cultured
man at the highest levels of French (and European) society. Jean de Berry was the son of King Jean II and
brother of King Charles V of France, as well as brother to the equally famous
Philip the Bold, founder of the dynasty of the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled
what became virtually a third country, poised between France and the Holy Roman
Empire and including some of the most productive areas of medieval Europe, the
provinces which became the current countries of Holland and Belgium.
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| Master of the Paremont of Narbonne, The Visitation from the Tres Belles Heures of Notre-Dame de Jean de Berry French (Paris), c.1380 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Nouvelle acquisition latine 3093, fol. 28 |
In this
first manuscript Mary and Elizabeth are represented as being indoors, in a room
with a tiled floor, a wood beam ceiling and high windows above walls covered in
cloth hangings. An exterior door, fitted
with iron hinges stands behind Mary and an open door stands behind
Elizabeth. Therefore, we are meant to
read the space as a reception room in Elizabeth and Zechariah’s home. This is carefully in keeping with the Gospel,
which says that Mary “entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth”
(Luke 1:40). Elizabeth has sunk to one
knee before Mary and gestures upward with open arms. Framed between her extended hands is Mary’s
left hand, which rests protectively on her stomach. The gestures of both women, therefore, call
our attention to the precious Presence taking human flesh within Mary. This gesture of Elizabeth will be repeated in
virtually all the Visitation images in which Elizabeth kneels. Her kneeling may, therefore, be read not as
honoring Mary, but as honoring the forming Jesus.
Interestingly,
this same image is part of a total page, which tells much of the Incarnation
story. The letter D below the main image
contains a tiny image of the Holy Family, of Mary and Jesus with St.
Joseph. At the bottom of the page the
Angel Gabriel announces the coming birth of John the Baptist to Elizabeth’s
husband, Zechariah, and Mary and Joseph are seen approaching Bethlehem.
This image
may have influenced another manuscript painter also working for Duc Jean de
Berry. This artist, identified as
Jacquemart de Hesdin produced another prayer book for the duke around 1385, about five years later than the Tres Belles Heures (above), in which he depicts the Visitation twice. In both images of the Visitation, the figures
of Mary and Elizabeth are posed very similarly.
But they are set in different locations.
Like the image from the Master of the Parement Narbonne the first of the Visitation images to appear in the Petite Heures of Jean de Berry, is set in an indoor space set between two doors. However, the space in the work by Jacqumart de Hesdin has paneled walls painted a beautiful turquoise color. The positioning of the hands and arms of the two women continues to point to the developing Jesus, but they do so in a different way. One of Elizabeth's hands wraps around Mary's back, while the other rests very gently on the developing Child. Mary's left hand can be seen supporting (or guiding?) Elizabeth's hand to the exact location. Mary's other hand also points, more subtly to her baby.
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| Jacquemart de Hesdin, Visitation From Petites heures de Jean de Berry French (Bourges), c. 1385-1390 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationael de Framce MS Latin 18014, fol. 32v |
The second image from the Petite Heures is similar and yet dissimilar to the two above. It is even more subtle in emphasizing that Elizabeth is kneeling to the Divine Person being given human form in Mary. For, Mary's right hand holds a book, presumably a prayer book or book of prophecy related to the coming Child. Meanwhile, she places her left arm around Elizabeth's shoulders to draw her closer, as Elizabeth places one hand on Mary's baby bump and the other around Mary's waist. It is an image of both great affection on the human scale and great reverence to the divine as it comes into the world in human form. And, surprisingly, this gentle image is set, not in the comfortable withdrawal of a domestic interior, but in a surprisingly barren landscape, out of doors. This lifts it completely from a rather insignificant event in the daily, mundane world, to a more universal one.
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| Jacquemart de Hesdin, Visitation From Petites heures de Jean de Berry French (Bourges), c. 1385-1390 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Latin 18014, fol. 206r |
From the
foundation of these pictures all the rest of the images of the kneeling
Elizabeth spring.1
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| The Boucicaut Master, The Visitation from a Book of Hours French (Paris), 1400-1425 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Additional 16997, fol. 45v |
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Attributed to the Egerton Master, The Visitation
from the Hours of Rene of Anjou
French (Paris), c.1410
London, British Library
MS Egerton 1070, fol. 29v
|
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| Dieric Bouts the Elder, The Visitation from Scenes from the Life of the Virgin Dutch, c.1445 Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado |
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| Luca della Robbia, The Visitation Italian, c. 1445 Pistoia, Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas |
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| Follower of Master of Jean Rolin, The Visitation from a Book of Hours French (Paris), c. 1450 The Hague, Koninklijk Bibliotheek MS KB 74 F 1, fol. 53r |
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| Follower of Jean Fouquet, The Visitation from a Book of Hours French (Tours), c. 1470 The Hague, Koninklijk Bibliotheek MS KB 74 G28, fol. 33v |
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| Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Visitation Italian, 1491 Paris, Musée du Louvre |
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| Francesco Granacci, Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist Italian, c.1506-1507 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Jacopo Pontormo, The Visitation Italian, 1514-1516 Florence, Church of Santissima Annunziata |
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| Juan Correa de Vivar, The Visitation Spanish, c.1535 Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado |
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| The Visitation from the Hours of Francois II French, 1555 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France MS Nouvelle acquisition latine 104, fol. 39 |
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| Tommaso Manzuoli, The Visitation Italian, c.1560 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum |
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| Peter Paul Rubens, The Visitation Flemish, 1611-1612 Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts |
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| Robert Anning Bell, The Visitation English, 1910 Manchester (UK), Manchester Art Gallery |
The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is May 31st.
© M. Duffy, 2017
1. For an interpretation of one of them, that by
Pontormo for the atrium of the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence,
see Wasserman, Jack. Jacopo Pontormo's Florentine
"Visitation": The Iconography, Artibus et Historiae, Vol.
16, No. 32 (1995), pp. 39-53.
Scripture
texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition ©
2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C.
and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part
of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the copyright owner.
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