Annunciating the Word in Image: Visual Exegesis of the Annunciation to Mary (Lk 1:26-38) in Counter-Reformation Italian Altarpieces.

Abstract

This thesis investigates the visual exegesis of the Annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26- 38) in Counter-Reformation Italian altarpieces. Based on the significant role the reception of the Bible had in the fracturing of the Church in the sixteenth century, the investigation centres on how the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church used visual exegesis in the pictorial representations of altarpieces as a means to communicate their methods of biblical interpretation. The Annunciation to Mary formed the subject of a considerable number of Italian altarpieces, as it stood as the foundational canonical text concerning the Virgin Mary. After the minimization of this figure in the Protestant Reformation, Annunciation altarpieces provided opportune moments for the reinstatement of Catholic Mariology. This saw a flourishing of treatments of the subject that constituted enormous breadth in their visual biblical exegesis, yet by and large these objects have neither been treated as significant by art-historical or biblical-reception standards. In order to adequately analyse CounterReformation Annunciation altarpieces and dissuade attempts to overlook these objects or treat them under a false characterization, this research constructs a series of case studies to evaluate the multiplicity of the biblical text’s reception within the period. It uses three prevalent issues relating to the objects – pictorial narrative and temporality, the use of the book as propaganda, and the motif of heavenised imagery – as a structure to analyse the Annunciations by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Federico Zuccaro, Guido Reni, Federico Barocci, Ludovico Carracci, Durante Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, Tiziano Vecelli, and Il Passignano. These analyses will be used as examples of how the visual reception of the Bible was informed by the multifaceted nature of the Counter-Reformation context, and how the exceptional exegetical range identifiable in Annunciations echoed the degree of inconsistency in the Catholic reform objectives as they migrated across ecclesiastical environments.