Happy Feast of the Annunciation
and happy birthday to my wonderful friend, G...
The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner
We are fortunate enough, here in Philly, to have this extraordinary painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
According to the PMA:
Tanner painted The Annunciation soon after returning to Paris from a trip to Egypt and Palestine in 1897. The son of a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Tanner specialized in religious subjects, and wanted to experience the people, culture, architecture, and light of the Holy Land. Influenced by what he saw, Tanner created an unconventional image of the moment when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear the Son of God. Mary is shown as an adolescent dressed in rumpled Middle Eastern peasant clothing, without a halo or other holy attributes. Gabriel appears only as a shaft of light. Tanner entered this painting in the 1898 Paris Salon exhibition, after which it was bought for the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1899, making it his first work to enter an American museum.
An ekphrastic poem of mine based on the painting appeared in the collection, Art through the Eyes of Mad Poets. Here it is:
The Feast of the Annunciation is the commemoration of the archangel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, asking her if she was willing to be the God-bearer, the Theotokos. Her yes, of course, made all else in Christianity possible.
Today is also my friend G’s birthday. G is a funny, warm, helpful, smart, engaged person. People like to be around her because she cares about things and people, is interested in things and people. She gets excited to roller skating and hiking, to make good food, to shop at estate sales, to make and drink really good cocktails. I am so luck y to have her as a friend. Hopefully, today, she will have a wonderful, wonderful birthday.