Gabriel and the Virgin: The Secret of the Annunciation

Simon Altmann

European Review, 2016, vol. 24, issue 1, 149-158

Abstract: It has long been known that the vast majority of the Annunciation pictures show the Virgin on their right. All former studies, including one by the present author, treat this as a problem of left-right or mirror symmetry. This is not correct: this symmetry exchanges the right and left hands and such a transformation is not permitted: Gabriel, must always be represented as right-handed. That this is so emerged from the study of a database that we have created, which contains 1007 Annunciations from C3 to 1750. Details of this database, which the author intends to put in the public domain in due course, and of other results, will be left for a further paper. It is a sufficient example here that from C3 to 1400 Gabriel shows his right hand to the Virgin in 62 items out of 93, and the left hand in only two. Even from 1401 to 1750 the Angel shows his right hand to the Virgin 278 times and only 22 for the left. A brief pictorial study of the evolution of the Annunciation paintings from C3 onwards shows why the right-handedness of Gabriel made it easier for the painter to present him on the left. A summary table of the results obtained from the database is provided. This study offers some explanation of the fact pointed out in a former paper that sculptural representations of the Annunciation are often variant, with the Virgin on the left.

Date: 2016
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