The Annunciation to Mary
“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David: and the virgin’s name was Mary.” The story of the angel’s visit to Mary and her agreement with the divine plan that she should conceive a child by the Holy Spirit is the subject of Luke’s gospel 1: 26-38. It has been the inspiration for centuries of artists fascinated by the meeting between an angel of the Lord and a simple country girl. Among the more spectacular depictions are The Cestello Annunciation by Botticelli with Gabriel kneeling before the Virgin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini where Mary cowers on her bed. In the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, Veronese’s Annunciation (above) shows the angel wheeling into the Virgin’s room still in flight. Common iconographic elements are a lily, a dove or a ray of light.
Since the second century Christians have fixed the date of March 25 as the Feast of the Annunciation. March 25 was known as Lady Day in medieval England and was considered the first day of the new legal year.