The Annunciation by Hans Memling

The Annunciation by Hans Memling

Mary nearly falls

This Annunciation is unusually physical. Mary does not kneel at a prayer desk; she sways backward as the news reaches her, and two small angels in white hurry to support her by the arms. Gabriel stands at the left in a richly brocaded cope, holding a sceptre, one hand raised. The Holy Spirit as a dove descends between them. Memling has turned the traditional composure of the scene into a moment of overwhelming emotion.

A room in Bruges

Everything else is domestic and exact. The bed is hung in red, a glass carafe stands on the chest, a vase of lilies sits on the floor, and light comes through the leaded window. The carafe, which the light passes through without breaking, is an old symbol of Mary’s virginity; Memling paints it so precisely that it never feels like a symbol.

Memling’s Bruges

Memling was the most successful painter in Bruges in the late fifteenth century, serving the city’s merchants and its many foreign residents. His pictures are gentler than Rogier van der Weyden’s, under whom he probably trained.

Where it hangs

The panel is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, part of the Robert Lehman Collection, and measures 76 by 55 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 6,407-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 42 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Robert Lehman Collection) · Wikidata Q9392232 · Wikimedia Commons