Another Annunciation scene, from the Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights Advent Pageant

My most popular post over the course of the past year has been about Henry Ossawa Tanner's painting, "The Annunciation," which I first saw thanks to The Rev. Stephen Muncie, Rector of Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights. In my post I contrasted Tanner's depiction of the angel Gabriel as a shimmering shaft of light and Mary as a young Middle Eastern peasant woman huddled in her bedclothes with the traditional one--represented by a seventeenth century painting by Phillipe de Champaigne--of Gabriel as a human figure with wings and Mary as an apparently well to do European woman.

Yesterday's Advent pageant at Grace Church began with the Annunciation (photo above); a more traditional representation than Tanner's but a more realistic, in my estimation, one than de Champaigne's.

Here's a better view of Mary, holding the infant, and attended by a very appealing calf.