Feast: 9th September

The story of Mary's Nativity is known only from apocryphal sources dated to the second centuries,[1] but it would take several hundred years for it to become an established feast of the Church. It likely to have originated in Syria or Palestine after the Council of Ephesus in 459 which gave great emphasis to the cult of the Mother of God.[2] The earliest written reference comes from St. Romanos the Melodist, the greatest of the Byzantine hymnographers in the 6th century.[3]

In the upper part, above a ring of clouds and crossing into the border is God as the Ancient of Days or the Lord Sabaoth. He is shown half-length in white robes against a pale red background. Within the halo are two superimposed red and green squares making eight points.

Below on the left is a green building with dark red stepped rooves. A wide arch opens revealing a gold background and a red curtain in front of which Anna, the Mother of Mary, half sitting, half lying, is on a green bedcover attended by women. Below the bed Salome the midwife holds the newly born Theotokos while an attendant pours water into a circular bath.

To the right is a pale ochre building with a red curtain stretches from the roof across to the adjacent building.

Below, in front of an opening, we see Anna with the child Mary held closed to her chest while Mary’s father Joachim, red-cloaked and standing contrapposto, looks on. Below on the right, within a separate aedicule, Joachim sits on a cushioned throne with his feet on a raised footstool.

The image follows the conventions established around 1200 and which changed little over the centuries. However, there are some unusual details which, together with the his obvious above average competence, suggest the painter’s association with a school of profound thought, probably hesychast on nature. Detail 3, with Joachim and Anna together, is quite different from the more conventional ‘caressing’ group where they sit together. Joachim’s special prominence – he is more commonly shown looking in from another room – is symbolic and meaningful, as is the gesture of his hands, raised with the right palm open towards the viewer and the left closed and turned towards himself, is taken from images of individual saints in icons of the 12th and 13th centuries.

[1] the Gospel of James (Protoevangelion) which introduces the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the unrelated Gospel of Thomas), both of which cover many miraculous incidents from the life of Mary and the childhood of Jesus that are not included in the canonical gospels.

[2] The church of Angers in France has a legend that St. Maurilius instituted this feast at Angers in consequence of a revelation about 430.

[3] He is traditionally shown in Russian icons of the Pokrov (Protection of the Mother of God).