Pino Blasone

The Hands of Mary

States of Mind in the Virgin Annunciate

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Montesiepi: Annunciation, sinopia

Humiliatio

Aber wunderbar sind dir/ die Hände benedeit./ So reifen sie bei keiner Frau,/ so
schimmernd aus dem Saum: “And yet your hands most wonderfully/ reveal his benison./
From woman’s sleeves none ever grew/ so ripe, so shimmeringly”; these are some words
directed to Mary by the archangel Gabriel, in a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, issued in 1902
and titled Verkündigung: Die Worte des Engels (“Annunciation: Words of the Angel”).[1]
Of course, they are fruit of a literary imagination. There is no literal trace of them in
the Scripture, peculiarly in Luke’s Gospel where the Annunciation is narrated. Nevertheless,
the German poet could well be impressed by so many paintings, where the hands of the
Virgin are depicted. Such a representation is not only a descriptive detail. Not seldom, it is
the figurative rendering of a gesture language, referred to emotional moods or states of
mind. Almost a mimic dance, whose sense transcends its explainable meaning itself.
As to those states of mind, they were analysed and codified already in the late Middle
Ages, mostly as an interpretation and comment on Luke’s Gospel (1: 26-38). Pertinent
examples are De laudibus Virginis matris by Bernard of Clairvaux, in the 12th century; the
Meditationes vitae Christi by Giovanni de Cauli or John of Caulibus (Pseudo-Bonaventura;
13th century); the Sermones de Annuciatione by Fra Roberto Caracciolo of Lecce (15th
century). De Cauli and Caracciolo explicitly allude to their visual representation. That was a
time, when one language let the intellectuals communicate in large part of Europe. But art
was a far more popular one, all the more in the great majority of illiterate people.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Montesiepi: Annunciation, detail

In the latest Latin work, we can even find a list of stages crossed by Mary’s soul
during the event of the Annunciation: conturbatio (initial surprise and trouble), cogitatio
(reflection, subsequent to the disconcerting announcement), interrogatio (inquiry,
concerning the words of the angel), humiliatio (humble acceptance and faithful submission
to God’s will), meritatio (intimate joy, thanks to the miraculous conception of Jesus).
Indeed, especially St. Bernard regards the humiliatio as a free choice by the “full of grace”.
No doubt, those concepts had an ascendancy on the artists. Yet sometimes they
visually anticipated, even exceeded their verbal formulation, in accordance with the true
spirit of art. Let us consider the case of an Annunciation by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the
Oratory of St. Galgano at Montesiepi, not far from Siena in central Italy. Dating back to the
first half of the 14th century and very deteriorated, the fresco was detached during a
restoration in 1966. Under that, a sinopia was discovered, quite different from the final
picture. This preparatory drawing is a typical scene of conturbatio. The Virgin looks so
perturbed by the apparition of the angel, that, instinctively, her arms clasp a near column.
Evidently, later the painter or his clients had a rethinking about. In the finished
depiction, Mary’s hands are folded on her breast, to signify a full assent to her exceptional
lot. What may be included into a typology of the so defined humiliatio, about a century
before the classification by Caracciolo. More surprising is the resemblance between
Montesiepi’s sinopia and a Virgin’s figure study, for a stained glass window in St. Martin’s-

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on-the-Hill Church (Scarborough, England, circa 1862; now in the Tate Collection at
London). Sure, the author Edward C. Burne-Jones could not know that Lorenzetti’s
precedent. Once again though, the resulting Annunciation is unlike its preparatory drawing.

E. C. Burne-Jones, London: study for an Annunciation, detail

Conturbatio

If we wish to detect some possible reason for the changing representation in the work
of Lorenzetti, we might rather read the Meditationes by John of Caulibus, which had a wide
circulation then: Non fuit turbata turbatione culpabili, nec de visione Angeli. […] Turbata
fuit in sermone eius, cogitans de novitate talis salutationis. […] Commendabatur enim quod
esset gratia plena, et quod Dominus erat secum, et quod erat benedicta super omnes
mulieres: at humilis non potest sui commendationem sine rubore et turbatione audire (“She
was perturbed for no culpable motive, nor by the vision of the angel but by his words, since
thoughtful about the novelty of his salutation. […] In fact, he had praised her thrice: as full
of grace, telling that God was with her, and that she was blessed above all women. Indeed,
no humble person might listen to be exalted likewise, without perturbation and blush”).[2]
Probably, Lorenzetti’s patrons or counsellors valued a humble image of the Madonna
as a model more proper and edifying than a disquieting one. Such an iconography will be
adopted in most further Annunciations, so that Mary’s arms or hands crossed on her breast
will become almost a standard in this figurative genre. What does not mean the examples of
conturbatio are few, in the history of art. In the Cestello Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli,
Mary’s hands are hold out in a defensive attitude (Florence: Uffizi Gallery; ca. 1489).

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 In an Annunciation by the Perugino, both palms of the hands are vertically raised and
similarly positioned but not opposite the angel, what suggests a surprise prevailing on
perturbation (Fano: Santa Maria Nova; 1498). In the Uffizi Gallery, we can also admire the
Annunciation and Two Saints by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi (ca. 1330). Here one
hand of the Virgin is lifted to close on her neck the dark veil, framing her fair face. It looks
surprised and cautious at once. Like in so many paintings of this genre, the other hand rests
on a Bible, she has been interrupted while reading. Often, the homage of a lily by the angel
may look like an extensive invitation too, to interpret the holy text with a pure mind.

Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, Florence:

Annunciation and Two Saints, detail

More theatrical is the movement, such as figured in the Annunciations by the

Tintoretto (Venice: Scuola di San Rocco; 1582-87) or by Lorenzo Lotto (Recanati, Italy:
Pinacotecha; ca. 1527). In the former Mary is clearly frightened, inside the disquieting
interior of a decaying mansion, probable allegory of painter’s places and times. In the latter
both hands are open, raised nearly to the level of her face, in a popular attitude of wonder.
She avoids looking at the angel, kneeling on the floor behind her. Her eyes are lifted up, the
gaze turned toward the heaven, as to beg protection from that uncanny presence. The
disquiet roused into the everyday life is stressed by the nice trick of a home cat, springing
aside as scared by that supernatural intrusion.
Another Lotto’s example of conturbatio is the Virgin Annunciate in the Church of
Sts. Vincent and Alexander (Ponteranica, Italy; 1527). Anyhow, such an animation becomes
more intense in the Baroque period, since congenial to its style. That is smartly evident in a

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Virgin Annunciate by a Florentine anonymous, today in the Dulwich Picture Gallery at
London. One hand close to her heart, the palm of the other is raised up, turned toward the
invisible angel. At the same time she stares downward, what for certain may be interpreted
as reserved modesty, but also as a gaze sunk into the depth of an inmost dimension.
Yet the hardest expression of a conturbatio is not artistic, in a strict figurative sense.
Rather, it is a literary one. In his modern poem The Mother of God, the Irish poet William
Butler Yeats makes Mary herself narrate her experience. The initial allusion is to an odd
tradition, which may be found in some apocryphal gospels, of a miraculous fecundation by
the way of an ear of her. Here the perturbation grows as a sacred terror: “The threefold
terror of love; a fallen flare/ Through the hollow of an ear;/ Wings beating about the room;/
The terror of all terrors that I bore/ The Heavens in my womb.// Had I not found content
among the shows/ Every common woman knows,/ Chimney corner, garden walk,/ Or rocky
cistern where we tread the clothes/ And gather all the talk?// What is this flesh I purchased
with my pains,/ This fallen star my milk sustains,/ This love that makes my heart’s blood
stop/ Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones/ And bids my hair stand up?”.[3]

Sandro Botticelli, Florence: Cestello Annunciation, detail

Interrogatio

Just varying a bit the order, let us respect the sequence established by Fra Roberto
Caracciolo (and, long before him, by the Evangelist himself). After a first moment of
bewilderment and before her acceptance of God’s demand, this is the time when Mary
speaks to the angel. Obviously, she asks how it is possible the unnatural conception
announced by him. Gabriel will answer what reliably she already knows: nothing is
impossible to God’s will. The Virgin herself would be the best witness of such a possible
impossibility. This is not a private miracle, since it is going to interfere with history itself.

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 By an artist, it ought to be a problem translating the connotation of the interrogatio
into a pictorial scene. For instance, one hand of an Annunciate by Francesco Vanni has its
open palm turned upward so as her gaze, in a familiar inquiring gesture (Siena: Church of
the Servites; 1588). The solution of Antonello of Messina, in his celebrated Virgin
Annunciate at the National Museum of Palermo (ca. 1476), was to portray a previous
instant. The lips of the Madonna are still closed. Yet one of her hands, stretched out toward
a virtual interlocutor, anticipates the question she is going to pronounce.
Certainly, this painting is one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance. There is
something enigmatic inside it, not less than in the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
at Paris, in the Louvre Museum. We can better try to penetrate its mystery, by considering
that here the imminent interrogatio is already a cogitatio, transparent in the expression of
the entire figure (and, especially in our civilization, Mary’s image is the main figure of the
soul itself). Nay, her reflection precedes the question and the answer. Likewise it might
happen, sometimes, in an anticipatory awakening consciousness.

Anonymous, London: Virgin Annunciate, detail

In itself, we dare to say, it is a not-yet-explicit inquiry. Generally, this does not

concern only a particular religious question, but is going to involve the whole sacred sphere.
In this sense, the Palermo Virgin Annunciate seems to be a presage of the modernity, some
years before the conventional start of the Modern Age. Furthermore, if we confront its dark
background with the golden one of the Annunciation by Simone Martini, the effect of the
former looks far more dramatic. Also this detail may be a signal of the changing times.
Just like in the painting by Martini, the other hand of the Madonna is raised up, to
keep closed on her breast the blue veil covering her head, descending around her face and
shoulders. Which dignified gesture here seems to denote the will to preserve a secret, deep
inside her heart, even more than to be a bashful one. Such a feeling might even be a

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farseeing premonition of what Gabriel refrains from telling. That is, her incoming “joyful
mystery” will convert into a sorrowful one, at least in a never enough far future.
Actually, we do not see the angel. We can only imagine him out of the frame and by
our side, for a hand of the Virgin is outstretched toward and she is looking at the viewer of
the picture – or, perhaps, further. Anyway, her attitude looks like a call for co-responsibility,
we ourselves cannot escape. In this sense it may be interpreted a meditation by Meister
Eckhart, a 13th century German mystic, of the Annunciation as an event thought to be
replayed within us, as well as once in Mary’s life. What suits peculiarly the artists, hundreds
of times being used to rethink the matter according to the culture of their time and place.

Francesco Vanni, Siena: Annunciation, detail

Cogitatio

Let us go on reading the Words of the Angel to the Madonna, in the modern
reinvention by Rilke: Ich bin jetzt matt, mein Weg war weit,/ vergib mir, ich vergass,/ was
Er, der gross in Goldeschmeid/ wie in der Sonne sass,/ dir kunden liess, du Sinnede/
(verwirrt hat mich der Raum)/ Sieh: Ich bin das Beginnende,/ du aber bist der Baum;
“Pardon, now my long journey’s done,/ I had forgot to say/ what he who sat as in the sun,/
grand in his gold array,/ told me to tell you, pensive one/ (space has bewildered me)./ I am
the start of what’s begun;/ you, Lady, are the Tree”. Now we better know, Mary is not only
sensitive, pure and humble. She is also the “pensive one”, such as may be eminently listen
to in the Magnificat, soon after the Annunciation in Luke’s Gospel. Indeed, her cogitatio
sounds as a congenial quality, besides a state of grace and longer than a momentary mood.
John of Caulibus and Roberto Caracciolo were pious preachers, mainly an expression
of the mentality of their times. Yet the original stature of a thinking Virgin stands out from
the works of Meister Eckhart and – in a more orthodox way – of Bernard of Clairvaux.
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While according to Eckhart the acme of the Annunciation is the acceptance or resignation
by Mary (in German, Gelassenheit), for Bernard her autonomous decision seems to be more
important, not only as an existential choice but as a reflection of the human free will. Upon
that moral decision it depends an individual salvation, as well as the redemption of history.
After all, each one’s story is conditioned by and concurs to orient our common destiny.
While Eckhart’s view is the deep insight of a mystic, Bernard’s one is the wider perspective
of a thinker. His Christian goal is not a mere self-surrender, but an emerging Other too.

Antonello of Messina, Palermo: Virgin

Annunciate

What ever could help Our Lady to take a so “crucial” decision? Though “blessed
among the women”, she is a woman as well. Besides the religious faith, a very human
means seems to be the prayer, in her case for a further providential support or interior
illumination. Plausibly that is why some artists – since Fra Angelico in the Perugia triptych
to the Sassoferrato, or to Giovanni Bellini in the Polyptych of Saint Vincent Ferrer at
Venice (ca. 1460) – depicted the Annunciate with joined hands, in a praying attitude.
Much later, one of the most impressive images of a thoughtful Madonna is in an
Annunciation, inspired to the Afro-American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner by a trip to the
Holy Land (Philadelphia: Museum of Art; 1898). Inside a poor oriental chamber, she is
sitting on her bed, looking perplexed and worried even more than alarmed or wary. The only
light is shed by a dim angelic shape. Her clenched hands show the fingers intertwining in
her lap. In this representation, surely the hope of the holy announcement and a denunciation

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of the same old world go hand in hand. As today as in the past, renunciation and
denunciation are recurrent themes in the reflection about the Annunciation.

Giovanni Bellini; Venice, Chiesa dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo:

Polyptych of Saint Vincent Ferrer, upper right panel

Meritatio

Between macrocosm and microcosm, that is an outer and an inner vision, there is a
dialectic specularity. So deemed Renaissance thinkers, as Nicholas of Cues or Marsilio
Ficino. A current novelty of the macrocosm was its rediscovered immensity. What about our
microcosm? True icon of the soul, Heaven’s Door and copula mundi at once, Mary’s
everlasting love works as an intermediary link. Before any real new thought, a strong
emotion can be supposed as well. Like the ancient philosophy is told begot by wonder in
front of the firmament, in one part we might consider the modern worldview influenced by
the conturbatio, facing the mystery of Annunciation. That deals extensively with what is
announced, implying a change in the perception of time. A time, now, in full progress, after
the long incubation period of the Middle Ages absorbed in a messianic expectance.
Let us complete our transversal revisiting the evangelical narration. At last, the young
maiden has chosen. Her decision has been taken. God’s messenger has gone. Yet she is no
more alone. Her Self has conceived the Other, renouncing to and denouncing any
selfishness. Within her, God has left himself as a live Logos. Also thanks to her and trough
the incarnation, the eternal absolute Being has made himself contingent and relative, ready
for an existential experience – and passion too – of his own creation.
“Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie/ In prison, in thy womb; and though He
there/ Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,/ Taken from thence, flesh, which
death’s force may try./ Ere by the spheres time was created, thou/ Wast in His mind, who is
thy Son and Brother;/ Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now/ Thy Maker’s

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maker, and thy Father’s mother;/ Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,/
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb”: these verse are from the poem Annunciation,
written by John Donne in the set of sonnets La Corona, in 1607.[4]

Bernardo Cavallino, Melbourne: Virgin

Annunciate

Let us notice a complementary contrast of Donne’s “little room” with Rilke’s

expression “bewildering space”. In a renewed Platonic meaning, the Annunciation is a
decisive step on the way of a transcendental reminiscence, as well as in view of a better
secular future. Nevertheless was this promise, pact or chance, morally accomplished, on
mankind’s side at least? Such a dramatic perception of the event – and, in background, of
the human condition and nature – by the English poet, so affected by allegorical paradox
and even by a sense of claustrophobia, sounds already advanced modern. It is analogous
with its rendering by some contemporary painters, mainly influenced by the Caravaggio.
Among them, let us focus on the Neapolitan Bernardo Cavallino, on his Virgin
Annunciate and The Blessed Virgin. In both pictures, the living model seems to be the same
Mediterranean beauty. In the former (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria; 1650),
indeed her expression looks nearly that of a Lady of Sorrows rather than of an Annunciate,
in this respect not very dissimilar to those by Antonello and by Tanner. We can see her in
profile and in the dark, in front of a hidden source of light, presumably coinciding with the
announcing angel. Her hands are folded on the breast, in a traditional way. But there
conturbatio, cogitatio and humiliatio, merge into one admirable synthesis.
By comparing it with The Blessed Virgin (Milan: The Art Gallery Brera; ca. 1650),
we can better realize why here the background is almost fiery. Now the Madonna is turned
frontward, in the full splendour of her majesty and glory. Similar to the white flowers which
a baby angel is offering her, the hands are going to open, as to receive that immensity we
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read of in Donne’s verse. Hardly we might believe she is the same in both cases; moreover,
the same model and character at once. Likely, along with the writing Madonna of the
Magnificat by Botticelli in the Uffizi, that is the best scene of meritatio in the history of art.
Akin to an ultrasound, there the mystery is carried to a point beyond which it is about to
reveal itself. If we cannot hear or see it no more, reliably this is for our inadequate senses.

Bernardo Cavallino, Milan: Blessed Virgin, detail

Copyright pinoblasone@yahoo.com 2008

[1] Rainer M. Rilke, Verkündigung (Die Worte des Engels), in the collection Das
Buch der Bilder, in Ausgewählte Gedichte, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkampf Verlag, 1973; p.
9 (trans. James B. Leishman in Rilke: Poems, New York: Everyman’s Library, 1996).
[2] Johannes de Caulibus (Giovanni de Cauli, or de’ Cauli, or else da Calvoli),
Meditationes vitae Christi, chapter IV (in S. Bonaventurae Opera omnia, vol. XII, Paris
1868; pp. 514-16. Cf. Johannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi, olim S. Bonaventuro
attribuitae, cura et studio M. Stallings-Taney, Turnhout, Belgique: Brepols, 1997; and John
of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. Francis Taney, Anne Miller and Mary
Stallings-Taney, Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 2000). In the quoted passage, the author
adds that Mary was used to the angelic vision or visitation. Indeed, such a justification is
derived not from the canonical source, but from an apocryphal evangelical tradition.
[3] William B. Yeats, The Mother of God, in the collection The Winding Stair and
Other Poems, firstly published in 1933.

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 [4] Herbert J. C. Grierson (editor), The Poems of John Donne, 2 vols., Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1912; p. 319. Cf. H. J. C. Grierson (ed.), Donne: Poetical Works,
London: Oxford U. P., 1971.

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