Most Highly Favoured Lady: The Annunciation in the Art of Our Medieval Churches

Enlightening online talk from the Churches Conservation Trust looking at images of the Annunciation in English churches.

Canon Jeremy Haselock, Vice Dean of Norwich Cathedral, led us through some of the problems of depicting the Annunciation and how Medieval artists overcame these including the lack of description of the scene in the bible, the delicacy of depicting the event while still maintaining the purity of the Virgin Mary and what emotional response to give Mary. 

He also talked about the cult of the House of Mary both in Loreto in France and Walsingham in Norfolk, both buildings or copies of the building in which the Annunciation was said to have taken place and both great centres of pilgrimage. 

Most interesting was his description of an English iconographic phenomena, which I had not come across before, the Lily Crucifix which combines the lily of the Annunciation and a crucifix as it was said that the date of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion fell on the same date 33 years and three month apart, an idea called the Cycle of Redemption. I loved the example shown here from Godshill on the Isle of Wight.

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