The Annunciation

The Feast of the Annunciation is today. I like the Burne-Jones portrayal below. It is one of a very few paintings of Mary in which she clearly has actual breasts. Most portrayals have them disappear into the folds of whatever she is wearing.

 Image: Wikipedia Commons

Even Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who you would think capable of delivering some actual sensuality, lets us down badly on this by painting Mary as  sickly little consumptive. Anyone not knowing the subject would assume that the angel in this painting is an angel of death not life and that the girl in it is about to die not to become pregnant. This is not a hortus conclusus but a hospital ward.

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Given all that, it is some of a minor miracle to come across Fouquet's Madonna Lactans  and Caravaggio's death of the virgin. Neither of these is a picture of the Annunciation but looking at these two highly unrealistic portrayals you get a real sense that there are real events behind these pictures,  which cannot be said of most other paintings of Mary.

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Image: Wikipedia Commons