The Angel of the Annunciation

The messenger without the message

An Annunciation needs two figures: the one who speaks and the one who is spoken to. This title supplies only the first. Three entries in this catalogue are titled this way, and in each the angel has been separated from the encounter that gives it its office. That separation is the sharpest test of rank a catalogue can apply. Remove the recipient and what is left is a figure defined entirely by an errand it is no longer performing.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives Elisabetta Sirani, an Italian painter, filed under Baroque. The measured colour family is brown. No date of creation is recorded, no location is recorded, and no dimensions are recorded — the record holds the title, the painter, the nationality, one style term and one measured colour family, and nothing else. Twenty-eight of the 224 works on this site carry no date.

Named nowhere, ranked by function

Gabriel is the archangel who performs this errand, and the title does not name him. Seven entries here record an Annunciation and only two use the name. What the rest use is the office, which in the inherited scheme is what the eighth order exists for: the messages of consequence belong to the archangels, and everything below them handles contact of a more ordinary kind. A title saying "the angel of the Annunciation" names a rank by describing an errand.