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The Annunciation, Barnby, Suffolk (!St. Edmundsbury & Ipswich) C.14?

Photo:T.Marshall Annunciation, Barnby (776KB)

This small and very narrow church was built in the 13th century, and the wall paintings, several of which remain, were discovered only recently. This Annunciation is on the north wall, opposite the Seven Works of Mercy, and the Crucifixion, which includes the Two Thieves, an unusual detail in the English church, is now also here.

Gabriel, with very large and flamboyant wings, is at the left, and the whole subject is painted on a background diapered with small rosettes. The Virgin at the right, separated from Gabriel by a sizeable empty space in the centre, has until this moment been reading at a lectern or prie-dieu.
Not much is left of her head, but her halo, just below the top edge of the painting, appears now as an incomplete circle of dots, as if edged with tiny pearls, which was probably the effect originally aimed at. It is not easy to see here, but she has begun to turn away, towards Gabriel, and her right hand is raised in enquiry while her left hand remains on the lectern - itself now reduced to a yellowish rectangle - keeping her place in the grey-outlined book. This is the first stage in the Angelic Colloquy - Disquiet or Conturbatio on the Virgins part:

when the Virgin heard the Angels salutation...she was troubled. This disquiet...came not from incredulity but from wonder, since she was used to seeing angels and marvelled not at the fact of the Angels apparition so much as at the lofty and grand salutation, in which the Angel made plain for her such great and marvellous things...
as codified in the fifteenth century by popular preachers such as Fra Roberto Caracciolo da Lecce¹, quoted above. It is unlikely that the Barnby painter would have analysed his work in Fra Robertos way, but he isolated the moment and produced the prescribed effect nevertheless, and a reading Virgin is now fairly rare in this kind of painting.
The Barnby painters graphic talent was limited; and his work would no doubt have readily drawn the epithet quaint from a Victorian. But an imaginative understanding of the stories he is painting is certainly not lacking here.

¹Quoted in M.Baxendall, Painting & Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 2nd. edition, OUP, 1988, p.51

St. Anne teaching the Virgin to read, Corby Glen, Lincs St. Anne & Virgin/Miracles of Virgin, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks Annunciation/Visitation, Ashampstead, Berkshire Annunciation, Barnby, Suffolk
Annunciation, Chalgrove, Oxon. Annunciation, Little Melton, Norfolk Annunciation, Gisleham, Suffolk Annunciation, Slapton, Northants
Annunciation, Sth. Newington, Oxfordshire Annunciation, Tarrant Crawford, Dorset Annunciation, Martley, Worcestershire Annunciation/Visitation, Faversham, Kent
Annunciation/Visitation/Nativity, Newton Green, Suffolk Annunciation/Visitation, Pinvin, Worcs Annunciation-Fring, Norfolk Visitation, Dale Abbey, Derbys
Visitation, Salisbury (S.Thomas), Wilts. The Burial of the Virgin, Pickering, N.Yorks NEW Death, Burial & Coronation of the Virgin, Sutton Bingham, Somerset Coronation of the Virgin, Black Bourton, Oxon
Background to Statue, with painted angels, Brent Eleigh, Suffolk Virgin Enthroned, with angels, Arundel, Sussex Virgin Enthroned, with donors, Cawston, Norfolk Life of the Virgin, Broughton, Oxon.
Virgin & Child, with wand and apple, South Newington, Oxford Virgin & Child, with sceptre & orb(?), Wickhamford, Worcs. Virgin suckling the Christ Child, Beckley, Oxon. Virgin suckling the Christ Child, Belchamp Walter, Essex
Death, Burial, Assumption & Coronation of the Virgin, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire Virgin intervening at the Weighing of Souls, Lathbury, Buckinghamshire The Annunciation/St Anne teaching the Virgin to read, Chapel of Our Lady of Bradwell, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire NEW Virgin & child enthroned/With SS Margaret, Catherine & Mary Magdalene, Little Wenham, Suffolk NEW

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17/12/00

© Anne Marshall 2000 5/3/13