Titian artwork illuminates feast of the Presentation of Mary

On November 21 we will celebrate the presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple. The apocryphal story behind the feast begins with Joachim and Anne, a childless couple who very much wanted a child. They were unable to conceive, however, and in his desperation, Joachim made a private sacrifice to God. Shortly thereafter, they received a heavenly message that they would have a baby.

This little miracle child, following in the tradition of so many other miracle children in the Scriptures, was Mary.

According to pious legend, when she was still very young, probably three years old, her parents brought Mary to the Temple in Jerusalem to consecrate her to God. Some stories have it that she was received there and remained in the Temple until the age of 12. It would seem that God had special plans for her.

The Church teaches that in order to fulfill those plans she was kept pure from the very beginning. From the moment of her conception, Mary was preserved as a pure and sinless tabernacle for Christ. Her preparation for motherhood begins much earlier than the events of the Nativity story at Christmas.

Part of the background to the entry of Christ into the world is the entry of his mother into the Temple, which is why it’s so providential that the celebration of the presentation occurs right as we’re preparing for Advent.

The presentation is a feast rich in symbolism and it became a popular theme for artists. There’s a particularly well-known and admired painting of it in Venice, a huge canvas 26 feet across and spanning the entire wall of a room, which is now part of the city's Galleria dell'Accademia. The painting was commissioned by a confraternity (a society dedicated to brotherhood and devotion) in the early 16yh century. The canvas was begun by artists and then abandoned. Later, the confraternity convinced the great painter, Titian, to finish it. He completed it between the years 1534 and 1538.

Because it isn’t his original composition from the beginning, the finished product isn’t a typical Titian. The carefully controlled spatial structure along with the anachronistic mixing of contemporary forms of architecture into an ancient story is typical of a slightly older style of Renaissance art.

The magic of the painting is really all in what happened when Titian took over. It’s in the way he paints his new figures into the older scene. He creates a dynamic tension in which the people strain against the formalism of the overall composition. Their motion and momentum brings the events of the presentation to life. The painting pulses with energy.

At the bottom of the Temple stairs a large crowd has gathered. Joachim and Anne are in the middle of the action. Joachim is turned away from the viewer and directly towards his wife as she forlornly watches her daughter walk away from her. You can almost feel the heart of the mother breaking into pieces as her husband places a consoling hand on her. In the front of the stairs is a mysterious woman who looks to be selling eggs from a basket. There’s some debate about whether this is the prophetess Anna or not, but I find the basked of eggs with all its symbolism of Easter to be interesting. It feels like a great, divine plan is already well under way.

The energy of the crowd is chaotic and unfocused. Some look off to the billowing cloud in the sky and one man in a balcony is even pointing out some hidden wonder. The art critic David Rosand believes the cloud has symbolic importance and connects it with one of the traditional scripture readings for the feast day. “One ought to expect this form,” he writes of the cloud, “moving so majestically over the landscape, to assume a meaning beyond its obvious naturalistic function.

"I would suggest that this meaning derives from the same wisdom texts with which Titian was so evidently familiar. (Ecclesiasticus 24: 5-7) ‘As a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwell in the highest places, and my throne is a pillar of cloud.’” Rosand’s interpretation indicates that the entrance of Mary into the Temple is a particularly sacred moment.

All of this is interesting enough, but not why the painting is so famous. The genius of the picture is in the way Titian contrasts the chaos of the crowd with the Blessed Virgin. At the top of the steps, the richly ornamented high priest waits. His vestments include the ephod and the 12 jewels that represent the 12 tribes of Israel. This is one of the most powerful men in Israel. At the bottom of the steps are Our Lady’s parents, other adults, and dignitaries. In the sky is a wondrous display as the clouds themselves approach like sacred incense.

Mary outshines them all.

Brighter than gold, more luminous than the sun, her diminutive figure burns like a blue flame. She is light beyond telling. She is filled with grace beyond nature. She has paused in her ascent to greet the high priest, and she is clearly in control of the entire scene. Her luminosity is particularly resonant in these days as Advent darkness gathers around us.

In the midst of our patient and faithful waiting, the light of Our Lady keeps solitary vigil. She is the spark who will bring Christ into the world, he whose light will set the whole world ablaze.