Carlo Crivelli - The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius

This is a painting which combines a tight, even claustrophobia-inducing built environment with wondrous heavenly remoteness. The juxtaposition of these differing spatial conceptions is oddly disturbing. The viewer is placed at ground level with a view up to the dizzying heights of the building on the right, the Virgin Mary’s home, with its overhanging parapet and revealing its ornately painted ceiling on the upper floor, heights which are usually considered great for mere mortals, while the distant sky, narrowly glimpsed from between the buildings, is itself pierced to admit a divine beam of light that has found its way through a small opening at just the right angle, its light striking the diadem on Mary’s head, transmuted through the ‘body’ of a dove representing the Holy Spirit.

 

Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, 1486, oil on wood transferred to canvas, National Gallery, London

The Annunciation, that much depicted biblical event, was the moment when Mary was visited by the archangel Gabriel who told her that she was to give birth to a child. He was to be the longed-for messiah, and what’s more, she would be impregnated without losing her virginity. Mary had been promised to Joseph, a carpenter, but he would take no part in the child’s conception, she was told.

In the painting, the angel is attended by Saint Emidius, the third century bishop of Ascoli Piceno. He is holding a scale model of that city, which was located in the Marche region of central Italy, near the Adriatic coast. The implication is that Emidius is interceding at the crucial moment, to ask that protection be given to the municipality at the same time as the Immaculate Conception occurs. Just a few years before the painting was made, Ascoli had been granted special ‘libertas ecclesiastica’ by the Pope, that is ecclesiastical freedom of operation and political autonomy. By virtue of this decree, no secular authority could interfere with its pursuit of its religious interests. Centuries before, Emidius had been responsible for a number of miracles; he had restored sight to a blind man and later caused water to flow where he struck a blow on a cliffside. He converted many pagans to Christianity before he was martyred.

The reason why Emidius gets an anachronistic look-in on the momentous annunciation is that word of the papal Libertas decree reached Ascoli on March 25^th, the feast day of the Anunciation, that is, exactly nine months before Christmas day. So, the exceptionalism felt by the city fathers for their place was two-fold; not only had their town been singled out for papal protection but it happened to them on such a significant date. It was therefore seen to be entirely appropriate for Crivelli, an artist who did most of his work in an around Ascoli and who was commissioned by Franciscans a few years later to paint an altarpiece for their church the Santissima Annunziata located on the edge of the town, to picture Emidius as part of the action and for the town to be fantasized as the setting for the incarnation. He (Emidius) was after all, its famous historic prelate and effectively the patron saint of the town.

The detailing in the painting (far too much to capture entirely in one short essay) is so sharply defined that it takes on an otherworldly quality. The tromp l’oeil realism intensifies the depiction of a transcendent moment and tries to convince you of its actuality. Even distant people and objects retain a strange, yet mathematically calculated clarity. Many of the details are symbolic, and I am obliged to those scholars whose observations have aided my own decoding of their meanings. For example, Gabriel and the Holy Spirit dove are not the only winged entities visible. Perched outside the first floor of Mary’s house a splendid peacock displays its long tail feathers. It stands for the immortality of the Virgin while the eye feathers represent God’s (and the church’s) constant watchful vigilance. Ownership of such creatures was the preserve of high-rank persons so its presence here gestures at Mary’s status as the future queen of heaven. Near the top of the painting, a birdcage is suspended from a bamboo pole. It contains a goldfinch, traditionally recognised as a symbol of the Passion of Christ, so here it acts as a sorrowful prediction of Mary’s future grief. I’ve counted ten other doves or pigeons in the painting, clear emblems of purity, chastity and innocence. But all these birds, like the other human figures populating the scene, are flesh and blood creatures. Their corporality together with the concreteness of the structures in which they exist seems to be at odds with miraculous goings on. The hyper-reality of the scene painted and the astonishing phenomenon happening there makes Ascoli into an unearthly realm that anticipates some of de Chirico’s puzzling visions of places where time seems to have stood still.

All of this leaves the viewer unsettled. At one level, it seems obvious that the artist wanted to convey the significance of the conception moment, but then the positioning of Gabriel alongside Emidius and outside the iron barred window of Mary’s house seems to diminish rather than enhance its import. Gabriel is a messenger yet to gain access to the intended receiver, albeit that the Holy Spirit is there already. But the pair remain for now on the street while we the viewers have a clearer view of Mary through the open doorways that faces us. Then there is the fact that, aside from one eye-shielding figure dressed in gold stood at the top of the steps and the young child peering from across the street, the rest of the human figures are oblivious to what is happening. Is this intended as a signal of man’s faithlessness, his ignorance or want of attentiveness? I’m both intrigued and made to feel uneasy by the oriental carpet that hangs from the upper floor balustrade, presumably as part of the domestic cleaning regime. Its meaning is not clear (at least to me). Does it indicate some mundane need for preparedness, anticipating the Holy Spirit’s arrival? But its untidy folds and its being held down by a large flower-filled vase, together with the presence of a terracotta ewer in the adjacent loggia opening speak of insecurity and vulnerability. One careless brush of an arm and they could both come crashing down. Another carpet hangs over the top edge of a distant triumphal arch, this one held down by a large red bound folio. Another precariously positioned pot and another birdcage sit to the right of it. In between, a tall authority figure looks at a paper, maybe a bill or a legal document while a diminutive penitent, gestures, hat in hand, for forbearance. What a troublingly odd little vignette this is to accompany the Annunciation!

Oddest of all though are the oversized apple and knobbly cucumber painted as if they sit on a ledge that bears the ‘libertas ecclesiastica’ insignia at the foot of the work. These fruits appear to occupy both the spatial domain of the painted scene (they cast shadows into it) and also the real temporal space of the viewer. They hover liminally between both worlds. The apple as a symbol is obvious enough with its associations with Eve. It was the forbidden fruit and came to be associated with the concept of original sin, but here, does it suggest that even the Virgin Mary is not free from the taint that followed the fall of man or is it more a reminder for the viewer that man became separated from God? The cucumber or gourd as some see it, is less obvious and so more problematic. Most likely it is a reference to fertility, fecundity, abundance. Mary’s womb is destined to bear metaphorical fruit, and the highly seeded cucumber is a somewhat eccentric and grounded visual reminder of her divinely derived generative capacity in a painting whose impetus otherwise draws the eye implacably towards the ascendent.