The Annuciation.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 - 1937) American.

Oil on Canvas, 1898 Philadelphia Musuem of Art.

her expression of fear and uncertianty makes the painting.

Particularly I like that the woman is clearly impoverished. You don't get a room in a stable on a cold night if you're rolling in luxury.

She is also one of the few blessed virgins in Western Art who actually looks Jewish.

Come to think of it, I have never seen a depiction of Jesus wearing a Yarmulke.

Tanner is clearly an artist who saw things in what was then an unconventional, albeit realistic, way. I previously linked his "Banjo Lesson" which was the first major painting about African-American life during which the banjo, often depicted derisively in 19th century American art in humiliating racist terms, was shown to be an instrument of high artistic integrity. It was also the first major painting to depict an African American in such to suggest that African American men were the cultural teachers of great depth.

Tanner, of course, was the first major African American painter, whose works were ironically enough collected by J.J. Haverty, one of the patrons of the "Lost Cause" Confederate Monument on Stone Mountain, GA.

I agree with everything you said about the realism, CNN actually had some forensic guys take a look at what Jesus actually looked like. And they came up with a simple everyday looking guy. I love how he portrays the angel Gaberiel, not as a man with wings, but a truly spiritual being, as something so beautiful or mysterious that a human figure couldn't possibly do it justice.


Here's their depiction of what Jesus probably looked like.

the Jesus depicted here better suits the tale, although it no less fanciful than Da Vinci's model.

Clearly this rendition is Jewish, and the eyes are intense and charismatic.

To the extent that there was a person who became the tale of Jesus, he clearly exerted a powerful devotion from his followers and I can imagine a person very like this rendition doing that, if only for the eyes. I am not sure that there are many similar people to Jesus, many of whom were highly questioable (as I think Jesus may have been) who have founded religious movements. Few I think had followers, post death, were quite as lucky as the early Christians, and I believe the real reason for the survival of Christianity may have been the remarkable (and mythologized) Paul of Tarsus, who moved the cult beyond Judaism, but all that said, this gentile prefers a Jewish Jesus.

But the myth that came was remarkable in many ways, and clearly it has come to be a cornerstone, for good and bad, of Western - and now international - culture.

One of the things that Christianity gave to the world was the idea of individual worth. Clearly a god-like chiseled model is less than ideal in accomplishing this ideal than an more ordinary looking person.

A fantastic piece.

Mainly because I view it whenever I go down there . . .