1467-1470 Hans Memling These figuers of the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary were originally the outer faces of the altarpiece's wings. They would not have been visable when the altarpiece was open, but when it was closed, they would have paired to create the Annunciation seen here. At a unknown date, the wings were sawed in half, separating the back from the front. There was a tradition in fifteenth-century Flemish painting of depicting fictive sculpture of saints on the outer faces of altarpieces. Memling adopted and subverted that tradition here, showing the Virgin and Angel in niches and on plinths, in white garments that would look like sculpture, were it not for the rosy, living flesh of the figures' hands and heads. This demi-grisaille, one of the earliest examples in Flemish painting, is a sophisticated and self-concious play with the way naturalism works in the art of painting. Memling may also have been responding to a theological prompt. The annunciation was when Christ became flesh, and that moment is rendered here with incarnadine figures.
aperture=f2.0 focal length: 55.0 mm exposure 1/60 sec ISO: 3200