Ad Imaginem Dei: March 2026

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Links for Holy Week

Giotto, Jesus Washes the Feet of Peter
Italian, c. 1304-1306
Padua, Scrovegni/Arena Chapel (detail)

I won't be blogging anything new during the next few weeks, which include Holy Week (March 29-April 1) and the Paschal Triduum (April 2, 3, and 4). Instead I am providing links to the numerous essays I have written in recent years about the art associated with these days. I will be updating some of these essays with new or refreshed images, so some of them may be unavailable from time to time.

Please use the links below to access them.

Also watch the Featured Posts section on the right for direct links to various associated articles. You may particularly wish to click on the links to the images associated with the Stations of the Cross and the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, both popular devotional prayers recalling the events of Holy Week.


Day	Title	Date Published	Link
*Palm Sunday*	Holy Week with Giotto, Palm Sunday	April 17, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-palm-sunday.html
	Entering Jerusalem, the Hinge to the Passion	April 9, 2017	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2017/04/entering-jerusalem-hinge-to-passion.html

*Monday and* *Tuesday*	Holy Week with Giotto – Jesus and Judas	April 19, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-jesus-and-judas.html

*Wednesday*	Holy Week with Giotto – Judas’ Betrayal I	April 20, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-judas-betrayal-i.html
	Spy Wednesday -- Thirty Pieces of Silver	April 1, 2015	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2015/04/spy-wednesday-thirty-pieces-of-silver.html

*Thursday*	Holy Week with Giotto – Holy Thursday, Washing Feet	April 21, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-holy-thursday.html
	Holy Thursday	April 5, 2012	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2012/04/holy-thursday.html
	Holy Week with Giotto – Judas’ Betrayal II, the Kiss	April 20, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-judas-betrayal-ii.html

Friday	Holy Week with Giotto – Good Friday, Overnight, Christ Before Caiaphas	April 21, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-good-friday.html
	Holy Week with Giotto – Good Friday, Early Morning, Mocking of Christ	April 21, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-good-friday-early.html
	Holy Week with Giotto – Good Friday, Mid-Morning, Via Crucis	April 22, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-good-friday-mid.html
	Holy Week with Giotto – Good Friday, Early Afternoon, the Crucifixion	April 22, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-good-friday-early_22.html
	Holy Week with Giotto – Good Friday, Late Afternoon, the Lamentation	April 22, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-week-with-giotto-good-friday-late.html

Saturday	Holy Saturday	April 23, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/04/holy-saturday.html
	O, Key of David! Come, break down the walls of death!	December 20, 2011	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/12/o-key-of-david.html
	Exult! – The Easter Proclamation	March 30, 2013	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2013/03/exult-easter-proclamation.html
	The Day of Gloom and the Coming of the Light Something Strange Is Happening Today © M. Duffy, 2026	April 4, 2015 April 8, 2023	http://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-day-of-gloom-and-coming-of-light.html https://imaginemdei.blogspot.com/2011/12/o-key-of-david.html

Monday, March 23, 2026

The Iconography of the Annunciation

Attributed to the Egerton Master, The Annunciation
From the Hours of Rene of Anjou
French (Paris), 1410
London, British Library
MS Egerton 1070, fol.15v

"" "Be pleased, almighty God,
to accept your Church’s offering,
so that she, who is aware that her beginnings
lie in the Incarnation of your Only Begotten Son,
may rejoice to celebrate his mysteries on this
Solemnity.
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever."

This is the Offertory Prayer of the Mass for the Feast of the Solemnity of the Annunciation, March 25.

At its very beginning Christianity makes an astounding claim. This is that one of God's greatest messengers, the Archangel Gabriel, visited a teenage Jewish girl in the Galilean town of Nazareth and announced to her that she had "found favor with God" to become the mother of a special child. He told her that her child would be a son and would be named Jesus and that "He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Her quite reasonable answer was that she didn't see how this could be as she was a virgin, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” (Luke 1:26-35)

The angel responded with the mysterious words: “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." And at these words the girl, whose name was Mary, gave her consent. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” And, nine months later, a baby boy was born in a stable in the Judean town of Bethlehem. (Luke 1:35-38)

This is the Annunciation. It is a feast day of the church that is celebrated on March 25th each year. The date of the event that it commemorates is unknown of course. But there was a belief in the early Church that March 25th was the day on which Jesus was both conceived and crucified. It is difficult to say whether this thinking influenced the date chosen for the celebration of Christmas, the feast of the birth of Christ, as nine months from March 25 is December 25. Or it may have been the other way round, with the date chosen to commemorate the birth of Christ dictating the date on which the Church celebrates his conception.

The Annunciation is a major event in the New Testament, and therefore has a long and complex visual history. Artists have tried to convey some of the mystery surrounding the event and to convey the ways in which thinking about this event developed over time. A list of the many ways in which this iconography has been developed through the centuries is listed below. Please feel free to explore.

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.

Uniquely among the monotheistic religions Christianity permits the use of images of God. Why? The answer lies in the Christian belief in the reality of the Incarnation. Since God has assumed human nature and form the Biblical prohibition against making images of God ceases to apply. As the second Council of Nicea declared in 787 "Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets."
(Council of Nicaea II: DS 600)

This decree of Nicea II was promulgated for the entire church, both Greek and Latin speaking, and was a response to the strongly held beliefs of the iconoclasts, who wished to suppress the use of images, which had convulsed the Byzantine Empire and the eastern churches for almost 100 years. In addition, St. John Damascene, last of the Greek Fathers and a staunch defender of images, had written in De imagine ("In Defense of Images") "Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, (Bar. 3.38) I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter." (St. John Damascene, De Imagine, Part I, 15-16, from Internet Medieival Sourcebook.)

The ways in which this imaging of the divine has been accomplished in the course of time is the subject of Christian iconography. To quote from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, iconography is "1: pictorial material relating to or illustrating a subject; 2: the traditional or conventional images or symbols associated with a subject and especially a religious or legendary subject; 3: the imagery or symbolism of a work of art, an artist, or a body of art".

The iconography of any subject develops and changes over time. Christian iconography develops and changes too, as reflection on the Gospels and Tradition develops over time and as the act of making art develops and changes as well. This is the background for this blog.

Ad Imaginem Dei

Pages

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Links for Holy Week

Monday, March 23, 2026

The Iconography of the Annunciation

Central Park Sunset

Oscar Wild 1997(?)-2014