A most unusual Annunciation...
On the transformative power of reading
Want to see some of the most unusual, rarest, and poignant Annunciation images from the entire Middle Ages?
Here’s a teaser:
Notice anything unusual about this Annunciation? Perfectly normal Book of Hours… Seems perfectly normal until you realize Gabriel is behind Mary, and that this Annunciation captures the moment before Gabriel arrives, which is virtually unheard of. This Annunciation is not about Christ’s conception, really: it’s about Mary and the power of her reading. What did that mean to a medieval reader?
Earlier this year on 1 Feb, for a zoom audience of about 70 people from around the world, I delivered the Candlemas Lecture for the Centre for Marian Studies, in Twickenham, UK. This was a sponsored event in memory of Cathy Oakes, a medieval art historian who was involved in the Centre.
In this lecture I introduce the fantastic illuminations from Books of Hours that I discuss in chapter 5 of my monograph, The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Devotion, and Interpretation in Medieval England (Boydell & Brewer, 2020). You can watch the lecture itself here, also with auto-generated subtitles:
https://stmarys.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=81cfcd2a-0f4c-4fb8-b649-b10901530c19
Hope you enjoy it!