Home > Authors Index > John Ruskin > Giotto and his works in Padua > This page
Giotto and his works in Padua, a non-fiction book by John Ruskin |
||
3. The Angel Appears To Anna |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ III. THE ANGEL APPEARS TO ANNA "Afterwards the angel appeared to Anna his wife, saying, 'Fear not, neither think that which you see is a spirit. For I am that angel who hath offered up your prayers and alms before God, and am now sent to tell you that a daughter will be born unto you.... Arise, therefore, and go up to Jerusalem; and when you shall come to that which is called the Golden Gate (because it is gilt with gold), as a sign of what I have told you, you shall meet your husband, for whose safety you have been so much concerned.'" (Gospel of St. Mary, chap. iii. 1-7.) The accounts in the Protevangelion and in the Harleian MS. are much expanded: relating how Anna feared her husband was dead, he having been absent from her five months; and how Judith, her maid, taunted her with her childlessness; and how, going then into her garden, she saw a sparrow's nest, full of young, upon a laurel-tree, and mourning within herself, said, "I am not comparable to the very beasts of the earth, for even they are fruitful before thee, O Lord.... I am not comparable to the very earth, for the earth produces its fruits to praise thee. Then the angel of the Lord stood by her," &c. Both the Protevangelion and Harleian MS. agree in placing the vision in the garden; the latter adding, that she fled "into her chamber in great fear, and fell upon her bed, and lay as in a trance all that day and all that night, but did not tell the vision to her maid, because of her bitter answering." Giotto has deviated from both accounts in making the vision appear to Anna in her chamber, while the maid, evidently being considered an important personage, is at work in the passage. Apart from all reference to the legends, there is something peculiarly beautiful in the simplicity of Giotto's conception, and in the way in which he has shown the angel entering at the window, without the least endeavour to impress our imagination by darkness, or light, or clouds, or any other accessory; as though believing that angels might appear any where, and any day, and to all men, as a matter of course, if we would ask them, or were fit company for them. _ |
||