Ivanka Demchuk’s Icon of the Annunciation
In these essays, the author often examines the interactions in art between the two halves of the Church, East and West. Within that context, we have explored the pendulum swings between icon and narrative, abstraction and naturalism, tradition and innovation. Nowhere are these themes more evident than in the Ukrainian artist Ivanka Demchuk’s icon of the Annunciation dating from 2019.
From the very start this painting breaks the conventional mold. Traditionally, Byzantine icons of the Annunciation conflate the story into a single image outside of time: the angel extends its hand in greeting, while Mary raises hers in both surprise and acceptance, and the Holy Spirit descends from above. Western artists more often explore the narrative movement of the story, choosing either the moment of greeting, of surprise, of questioning, or of acceptance. Demchuk chooses still another, the moment before the angel enters.
Mary is sitting in a dark room with only a small window above her head casting golden light onto her face. The gold is not traditional Byzantine gilding, but rather the gold of a wheat field, with a bright white sky above it. But like an icon’s gold leaf, the gold paint represents the Uncreated Light breaking into the darkness of the earthly realm, the dark gray walls enlivened only by the striped cushions and the little plant by Mary’s knee.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on art from the online archives
32.4—July/August 2019
on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello
33.2—March/April 2020
An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward
more from the online archives
31.2—March/April 2018
How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture by R. J. Snell
29.5—Sept/Oct 2016
on Past & Present Atheism & the Invention of Happiness by Jordan Bissell
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
