The Annunciation is an oil painting on oak panel attributed to Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus. The painting was completed c. 1482 and was partially transferred to canvas in the 1920s.
About Annunciation (Memling) in brief
The Annunciation is an oil painting on oak panel attributed to Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus. The painting was completed c. 1482 and was partially transferred to canvas in the 1920s. It is today held in the Robert Lehman collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The panel shows Mary in a domestic interior with two attendant angels. Gabriel is dressed in ecclesiastical robes, while a dove hovers above Mary, representing the Holy Spirit. The iconography focuses on the Virgin’s purity. Her swoon foreshadows the Crucifixion of Jesus, and the panel emphasizes her role as mother, bride, and Queen of Heaven. The original frame survived until the 19th century and was inscribed with a date believed to be 1482; modern art historians have suggested that the number’s final digit was a 9, which would give a date of 1489. In 1847 Gustav Friedrich Waagen described it as one of Memling’s “finest and most original works”. In 1902, it was exhibited in Bruges at the Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruge. In Byzantine art, Annunciation scenes depict the Virgin enthroned and dressed in royal regalia. It was a popular theme in late medieval European art, Mary acts as Theotokos, the God-bearer as affirmed in 431 at the Council of Ephesus.
In later centuries she was shown in enclosed spaces: the temple, the church, the garden. The Virgin holds an innovative position and seems to be either rising or rising from her swoon. She seems neither surprised nor fearful at the announcement; according to Blum Blum, the scene is rendered with a great sense of naturalism and successfully depicts Mary’s transformation from girl to God. The Annunciation was commemorated as a Catholic and Eastern Orthodox feast celebrating the announcement by theArchangel Gabriel to theVirgin Mary. It has a richly embroidered red-and-gold brocade cope, edged with a pattern of gray seraphim and wheels, over a white alb and amice. He holds his staff of office in one hand, and raises the other towards the Virgin. He bends his knees, honoring and acknowledging her as Mother of Christ andQueen of Heaven, and his feet are bare and positioned slightly behind hers. The red-curtained bed acts as a framing device, similar to the canopy-of-honor or baldachin’s canopy behind her. In the painting, the Virgin is in a view; directly behind her is a jeweled blue mantle in which she wears a plain blue mantle, the plain white shift at the hemline and a purple peeks out at the neck and wrists, indicating her royal status. The motif is found in van der Weyden’s c. 1435 Louvre Annunciation and the 1455 Saint Columba altarpiece.
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