MARYS for May #9

Annunciation

Maurice Denis, 1913, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing

Maurice Denis (1870-1943) belongs to a group of late 19th century French painters called “les Nabis” (the prophets).  These avant-garde prophets of modern abstract art abandoned the traditional techniques and color schemes of painting along with much of the implied meaning given to works of art. Denis famously defined painting: "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."

Despite its flattened composition and bold colors, Denis’s Annunciation is quite deep and traditional. Light is the key to understanding the painting. The Angel Gabriel enters through the door on the right, God’s messenger breaking into the world. Natural light, cool and lifeless, pours in from behind the angel, washing over the bed, the wall and the front of Mary’s gown. A different quality of light, rich and golden, enters from the window behind Mary, glancing over her shoulder and illuminating her face. This is divine light, the light of life which is coming into the world at this moment. Notice that Gabriel, God’s emissary, reflects this light back towards Mary. As this light pours though the window onto the floor, the shadow of the window’s frame marks a cross at Mary’s feet.

This is where Denis’s radical painting illustrates an ancient analogy. The fathers of the Church frequently employ the image of light passing through glass to explain the Virgin birth. Just as the light passes through the window pane neither breaking the glass nor diminishing the light, so the eternal Word of God passes through the womb of Mary preserving fully both Christ’s divinity and Mary’s virginity. Gerard Manly Hopkins, whose poetry is a radical as Denis’s painting, sees this as Mary’s mission:

Mary Immaculate. . .

This one work has to do—

Let all God’s glory through,

God’s glory which would go

Through her and from her flow

Off, and no way but so.*

*Gerard Manly Hopkins, “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe,” lines 24, 29-33