Artibus et Historiae no. 16 (VIII)

1987, ISSN 0391-9064

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LEO STEINBERG - «How Shall This Be?» Reflections on Filippo Lippi's Annunciation in London, Part I

Not only Christian philosophers but also artists concerned themselves with the quomodo of the Incarnation. Painters often represented the Spiritus Sanctus in the form of a dove from whose beak divine rays sometimes emanated. The critical questions of the dove's position in relation to the Virgin and at what point on the Virgin's body it should aim its divine rays were rethought with astonishing independence of mind by Lippi in his London Annunciation. The dove has relinquished its normal high-flying station and is level with the Virgin's womb. The rare golden motes emitted from its beak are directed at the Virgin's belly. The Virgin's dress parts over the abdomen, and the opening releases a burst of similar gold-dotted rays. This "How" of Mary's impregnation is in symbolic analogy to the process of vision as understood in 15th-century Florence: visual rays exiting from the eye mingle with oncoming rays to constitute sight. Lippi suggests light as the sole and sufficient symbol of fecundation. As light is the world's noblest substance and its cognate, vision, the noblest sense, so their mutual coupling is fittest to serve as a symbol of sacred union.