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| Ecce Ancilla Domini 1850 |
That might be the retelling of those ‘penny drop’ moments of
my own past: standing in the gloom of an ancient abbey as part of the bass line
of a school choir and suddenly realizing with dub-struck awe the significance
of the words of O Come, O Come Emmanuel;
seeing the light of something beyond words in the sparkling eyes of an Alzheimer’s
sufferer’s rare smile at the pulling of a Christmas cracker; recognizing in the
playful determination of a small dog in deep snow a thread of life-joy that
mysteriously connects sensate beings; or finding a gaggle of excited young
children suddenly still and quiet as the story simply told touches them. Fortunately I could tell of many such
instances, but their power, though real, is so hard to recreate as a third
party retelling. Where then should I
look for inspiration?
As is so often the case, looking back might be a key. Looking back at what the stream of tradition
we inhabit might offer. And that brings
me to a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Ecce Ancilla Domini (The
Annunciation), painted 1849-50. What Rossetti
portrays is the frailty of a young woman, a slip of a girl; a simple shift
clinging to her figure, her arms bare, suddenly awoken from sleep perhaps, her
knees drawn up, she cowers against the wall of her sleeping room. She is thin, troubled looking, and possibly
feeling threatened. She avoids looking
directly at the presence that has invaded her room. She certainly doesn't look as if she
considers herself favoured - much perplexity sums it up. As one scholar suggests, Mary's exclamation
at the end of the encounter, "Let it be to me according to your word"
is more a shrug of resignation faced with the inevitable within the world of
the sexual politics of first century Palestine, than the triumphant consent we
usually take it to be. The painting is
suggestive of that fearful acquiescence.
Rossetti's version of the story of the angel Gabriel
announcing to Mary her pregnancy and its purpose has none of the studious
contemplation and noble acceptance of traditional renderings so beloved of
Renaissance artists. This is a radical
reinterpretation in which the humanity - the bodiliness if you like - of Mary
is plain to see. Her holiness is
apparent by the halo, but the posture and the look make her clearly a woman not
a superhuman saint. The women figures of
the pre-Raphaelite painters like Rossetti do have a romantic, otherworldliness
about them - but those ethereal faces and forms all the more emphasise the
feminine, passionate, mysterious and sensual nature of flesh, human flesh.
The picture is almost wholly restricted to white and the
three primary colours - a curious goldness hangs around the angel’s feet, blue
drapes signify heaven and the virgin, red hair brings to mind Christ's blood,
and the whiteness of cloths and the lily mark purity. The symbols that any earlier artist might
have used are all there - yet the picture makes a new statement. When it was exhibited in 1850 criticism
rained down on Rossetti and he vowed never to show it again in public.
The Church sees fit to label this cowering girl the Blessed Virgin
Mary – we should hear that not such much as a title but as a description of her
body. Virgin here can designate nothing
else but a body. Her swollen womb is
just that, her carrying as tiring as any mother-to-be's carrying, her labour as
painful and exhausting, her birthing as bloody and as emotional as any
birthing. God will be born a body of a
body. And we will carol the promise of long
ago made new again in amniotic fluid spilt, a slimy form squealing and
stretching in air for the first time, and breasts heavy with milk.
That's wonder; that's gospel. God is born a body to make holy every body. A place to begin .....
The sermon woven from this strand is here.
