ANTONELLO DA MESSINA's VIRGIN ANNUNCIATE

ANTONELLO da MESSINA's VIRGIN ANNUNCIATE (Virgin of the Annunciation)

These two paintings are not the same. The left image is a painting by Antonello da Messina of 1476 that is in the collection of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, Sicily. The right image is a copy said to be by Antonello's nephew, Antonello de Saliba, of the exact same subject, painted in the 1490's and held in the collection of the Accademia Gallery in Venice. The Accademia painting is signed ANTONELLUS MERANIUS PINSIT on the board below the lectern, a similar signature to that of Antonello da Messina but not the same.

When the viewer is in front of the Accademia painting, however, the high quality of the light and treatment of the skin and fabric make it appear to be by the older master. In order not to confuse the reader, though, I will limit my images from now on in this blog entry to the PALERMO VIRGIN ANNUNCIATE, which is considered by all scholars to be by ANTONELLO DA MESSINA, the Sicilian artist who lived from 1430-1479.

 

A most astonishing, radical image for the fifteenth century and now. The Annunciation is normally depicted as the story in the Bible of Mary being visited by an Angel from God who tells her she will be impregnated by the holy spirit and will bear God's son, Jesus. The usual elements that a viewer finds in scenes of the Annunciation are the angel, Mary, God's face or shaft of light, the dove of the  Holy spirit, and the room in the house where the Angel enters, as you see in these representations of the subject, one by Masolino da Panicale of c. 1424,

and that of Fra Angelico in a 1445 version, where you also see Adam and Eve,

But Antonello has eliminated all of the peripheral elements, the angel, Adam and Eve, God, the room, the dove of the holy spirit, the shaft of light, as in Piero della Francesca's 1462 version:
 
 or the lilies, as in Fra Filippo Lippi's 1440 San Lorenzo Annunciation:

       Here in Antonello's version is the Virgin Mary sitting or standing at her lectern, reading a passage of the Magnificat, her hymn celebrating God. All we see is one woman in a blue cloak. She is not crowned as Queen of Heaven, she is not given a halo to indicate she is holy. We only see the upper half of her body. The light illuminates her face, blue head covering against a dark background so that we, as viewers, are forced to focus on her presence. And her presence is three-dimensional, thanks to the light, thanks to the projection of the corners of the board and lectern towards us at the bottom,

and thanks to the beautiful foreshortening of her hands as they reach out into palpable space, one addressing an unknown visitor, the other grasping the edges of her cloak.

Her visitor in normal Annunciation scenes is the Angel Gabriel, but in this case, in a radical modern twist, the visitor is the viewer who becomes the Angel in the dramatic play scene set up by the artist. Instead of the viewer looking at the story as an observer, the viewer is IN the story as a participant, a jolting change of role for traditional Annunciations. The Annunciation story has been reduced to just the figure of Mary, with only a book and lectern as the dramatic props. But one other person is implied in the space in front of her and by her greeting of that person. The visitor who is implied is every viewer who comes to see the painting. 

No other artist before Antonello had produced the scene of the Annunciation in this way. His is a revolutionary presentation because it assumes the viewer takes the place of the holy Angel, an assumption about the holiness of all human beings but also unusual for acknowledging the spectator as well as allowing the viewer to take part in a most intimate mystery.

          I have talked in other blog entries about Michael Baxandall's ideas about the stages of the Annunciation being illustrated in various gestures in paintings in this period. The five stages are Fear, Reflection, Inquiry, Acceptance, Merit (Hymn), and elements of four of the five stages appear here in Antonello's version.  Her Fear is shown in the grasping of the gown and protecting her body,

her eyes look slightly down in Reflection, the Hymn (Merit) is in the book; only Acceptance where she crosses her arms across her chest is not painted here. In this version her right hand is raised in the INQUIRY STAGE of the Annunciation when Mary greets the Angel and asks, "How can I be pregnant when I have not known a man?"

Since she is greeting the Angel and seems about to talk, 

the emphasis in Antonello's version is on the INQUIRY STAGE, the same stage we discussed in a blog entry on Leonardo's Annunciation where she also raises a hand:

but as you can see in the Leonardo version, even he includes the Angel, the lilies, the room at the back.

Antonello's simple purity and concentration on the head and hands of the figure make his painting very powerful and arresting. The casting of the shadows on the chin, nose, mouth, and eyes, projects the face of the Virgin forward into the picture plane so that the viewer feels approached by a real person, a pure, sweet and vulnerable person. She wears no jewellery, has a simple cloak and a simple desk.The direct connection between viewer and Mary is extraordinary.

She asks the question because she does not believe she is worthy to be greeted by a spirit sent from God. Her incredulity about having been chosen is firmly produced here by the artist, and we await her acceptance of the news as if we were the Angel. The page of the book with the hymn moves in the wind, as if God already knows her answer.

"How can the reality of my life on earth be affected by creation outside of reality?" she seems to ask.
The unseen visitor as the spectator/Angel does not have the answer to that question, but the answer is in the page of the holy word mysteriously moving as if mimicking the life about to stir in her womb.  In some glances she smiles with warmth as she knows she will be the handmaid of the Lord.
        By Antonello's hands she has been transformed into any woman whose life experience changes when she receives word that she is pregnant. The Virgin's expression gives the sense that she knows she is becoming part of the continuation of life, of all life, of all survival, and she is not yet old enough to know that part of life also contains the sadness of death. Her time is at the beginning, and she raises her hand in greeting for the opportunity to meet the mystery head on.  For Antonello she is simple because a virgin, and she is simple because she is every woman before an encounter with the complexity of the opposite sex. Her appeal is to be specific and ideal and general all in one.

Through his frontal depiction of her addressing the viewer, he engages us in one of the great mysterious events in the story of Christianity while making her hand gesture one of hovering between the real and the unseen. A more poetic and human representation of what knowledge means is hard to find. For knowledge always hovers like a spirit filling the soul and raising new questions.
         And what Antonello has left all viewers with is the beauty of the light. It is the light we remember after we leave the image. The light as it falls on the extended fingers of the hands,

the light as it caresses the pages of the book, the light as it picks out the fingernails on the closed hand, the light as it touches the top of the lectern and the bottom of the ledge.

But the most beautiful passage of all of the light is in the catching of the inside cut of the openings on the back of the lectern:

The shapes almost look like replicas of Mary's head and shoulders, reminding us that this moment is about one person becoming two. Her perfect triangular shape is modified in the two openings; she
becomes more than a perfect, pure mathematical form; she is doubling in the instant represented.

She is chosen to be the vessel to carry the light of the world. Even non-believers have to gasp in front of this painting for the beauty of its light.

           And then, look at the sacred cloth she is wearing over her head. The
fold of the blue cloth is painted by the painter directly over her forehead,
dividing the cloth in two. Two parts of the cloth, two hands, two figures cut
into the lectern. The new life inside of Mary is reflected in the rhythms of two,
two, two. And we as spectators complete the ultimate two as angel and Madonna.