The Announcement to Mary according to Saint Thomas Aquinas

The Painter of Light

In the works of Angelic (14th century), art acquires meanings that transcend its artistic value and has other functions: it cannot be understood in its nature as art without this signification and functionality that are not artistic. To make them objects of art, a purely artistic consideration, means not even to understand them as art.Therefore, not indifferent to aesthetic issues, art criticism, and art history problems, but also theological and liturgical ones: indeed, there is an osmotic circle between the iconography of these works and the iconology that founded them, constituted by a global Christian culture in this case. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches:«Beauty is essentially present in contemplation, then from the contemplation of Wisdom it is said: I became a lover of its beauty». (S.Th. a. 2 ad 3)And Saint Gregory the Great adds: «The contemplative life, more beloved, is sweetness».Angelic’s personality resides in this synergy, indeed, it is the highest expression. Gothic, the last of Gothic and the first of Humanists, an independent artist and a preacher catechist, the first to share a sense of natural joys: as his gardens highlight the freshness and joy of spring in the Annunciation frescoes and the Noli me tangere [Do not touch me] in Saint Mark.If Angelic adds the charm of great visual beauty, intense expression, delicate color attraction, his scenes have a tactile value and at the same time an indefinable one that nothing more could be said.The gold background jumps out at you like a jeweler’s lace in the auricles, angelic wings, in the scratched and dazzling rays of divine power, in the golden-melon curls of angels.The gold of the background bursts forth in the gold incrusted as a lacework of a goldsmith in the halos, angelic wings, in the crossed rays of God’s power, in the golden-honey clusters of angels.It is said that he would not take up a brush until after prayer. The fact of being penetrated by God in his prayers gave him a light that gave substance to his angelic capacity to compose the face of the Virgin, the saints, and the Trinity. To feel the beauty of his painting, one might need to share with him that life of faith that moved and made him live. Of course, Beato Angélico remains at the turn of the Middle Ages and Humanism, while art historians identify his connections with Masaccio, Ghiberti, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Monaco, even the Flemish masters. But entirely his is the clear spatial orchestration, the expanded breath of the landscape, the very bright chromatic range and within it rich in infinite and delicate gradations. Someone has even spoken of a sacred representation with eloquence and reason. He is the one who, between Donatello’s realism and Alberti’s theories of historicity, created the compromise of naturalism by paving the way for an art that is no longer a static representation but, on the contrary, a lively discourse, a human conversation.To understand Angélico, one must understand his enigma. He iconographically tells the story of salvation, for which the new style of Florentine Renaissance coincides with him intentionally, with the existential contemplation of the sacrament of salvation.Beato João Angélico is a hagiógraph, that is, he writes for the ecclesial ministry the revelation of God to men in color and light. And he wrote it as a monk, to quote those Greeks who participated in the Council sessions in Florence from 1439 to 1443. That is, he exercises in the Church the ministry of the hagiógraph, composing his revealing painting with the experience of ministerial priesthood and the conventual situation that also lives within the Church. Thus, the components of his work, each of which he realizes in privileged dimensions as evidenced by those who lived with him, are multiple and all influential at unusual levels. The liturgical assembly and the ecclesial community, the conventual community, the choir, the cloister, the cell, the refectory, the study of the preaching friar, and the painter’s technique merge and reinforce each other.Fra João Angélico opens a small series of twelve artists who, over the centuries, from the Italian Renaissance to the present day, can legitimately claim to be authors of sacred art works, art for liturgy. The spiritual tradition of the Regular Canons of Saint Dominic comes to him, and the liturgical tradition of monks, the art of Lorenzo Camaldolense. His relations are known, on one hand with Antonino of Florence, on the other hand with Catherine of Siena. And there is also Thomas Aquinas. While Fra João is in harmony with Fra Antonino, future bishop of Florence, by native and acquired sympathies, and while Saint Catherine is a mystical filter of intuitive and pictorial implementations, Saint Thomas is the doctor who offers and explains the impeccable biblical source sought after. Beato Angélico *knows* the Scriptures. Antonino of Florence, Catherine of Siena, and Thomas Aquinas obey to *aliis tradere* [delivering to others the fruits] contemplated in the uniform Dominican tradition.## The Theology of St. John of Aquino and the Annunciation of MaryFrei João (St. John of Aquino) grasps the decisive theology of his spirituality and culture, structured around the cornerstones of faith: the new humanity and the new creation, the Christological principle. The *radiance* of the Incarnate Word and the deification of man, the ecclesiological principle. The *today* of the mysterious event, the sacramental principle, is realized in transfiguration, on the cross, and at Easter, according to Catherine of Siena’s mystical taste.### **The Annunciation**In the icon of the Annunciation of Mary, Beato Angélico (St. Nicholas of San Marco) sees forever foreshadowed the vocation and mission of the Church, a vocation and mission that in the world can only be fulfilled by the Cross that God’s Word will bring into her life and earthly journey. The greater the mission, visible or invisible, the greater the availability of the heart. To the Word made flesh, Mary lends not only her body and blood but everything: her capacity for love and dedication, her efforts, her thoughts, her songs, her silences of adoration.In the Annunciation icon, every believer recognizes his vocation. No extraordinary human skills are needed to serve validly God’s work of salvation; only a humble, total donation of love is required. *“Do not be afraid, Mary!”*Frei João has painted the announcement of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary sixteen times, as far as we know. He depicts her in more elaborate treatises, in a relic for the altar of Santa Maria Novella. He paints her in a missal in the church of his first convent. He narrates her in Dominican churches in Fiesole and Cortona, Franciscan churches in Santa Croce in Florence and Servite churches in Santo Alessandro in Brescia, reworked by Jacopo Bellini in 1444. But the mystical contemplation, again by Dominicans and Servites, offers especially, in the frescoes of the corridor and cell 3 of the convent of San Marco and panel 2 of the Argenti Office for the Annunciation, the liturgical memory of the Incarnation of the Lord.In the corridor fresco:

Frei João positions the Annunciation within a *templum*, in a complex spatial cut, clearly accommodating the *hodie* [today], the moment of the Lord’s Incarnation. It is an agile and solemn architecture, erected on a grassy enclosure leading to a linear room, nestled amidst a wooded garden and pushed forward by it towards the porch. The twelve-leaf gate is framed by morning light and open to the forest, emphasizing especially the timeless essence of time and space from arch to arch and up to the wall with iron bindings on the capitals. The impression is strong and immediate. The contrast between the bare, timeless cell, the 15th-century structure, and the ancient vegetation beyond and on this side of the fence echoes sensitively to Genesis: “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, to the east” (Gn 2,8) in harmony with Song of Songs:“‘Under the shade of my beloved I sit down, his fruit is sweet to my mouth. He has led me into his wine cellar, and his signet ring is upon me, love. My beloved stands behind the wall, gazing through the lattice. Now my beloved speaks, saying: ‘Rise up, my friend, my fair one, come! Behold, the winter is past, the rain is over, and gone are the flowers on the plains. Hear the voice of the dove, and see what she brings. Rise up, my friend, my fair one, come! My dove, hidden in the crevices of the rock, show me your face, let me hear your voice for it is sweet’” (Song of Songs 2:3-4.9-12.14).The round relief carved into the arch of the central column does not continue Isaiah with the prophetic scroll (Is 7:14) as in Cortona and Prado, but instead is filled with a moving void. The fact that Frei João omits here the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise certainly serves to enhance the decisive marriage between God and humanity finally realized. From Eden’s garden to Song of Songs’s garden, we pass through the festive memory offered by the liturgy on the Lord’s Incarnation.