The world’s most surprising announcement

Take a few moments to think afresh about a young Jewish woman barely 14 or 15 years old, living in first-century Galilee. She encounters a messenger of God, the archangel Gabriel. He declares to her that she has been “favored by God”—set apart as chosen—and that she will carry God’s only begotten Son in her womb. She will deliver the Deliverer, Messiah, and Savior of her people and the whole world.

Could this be the most momentous supernatural encounter in all of history?

The truth is we have no category for such encounters, nor can we readily imagine it without all the angelic stereotypes and preconceptions crowding our minds. Wing’d, bronzed, majestic armored athletic figures holding swords, hovering in the air with blinding lights and a terrifying sense of otherness—such that they must always say, “FEAR NOT!” But African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner working at the turn of the 20th century offers us a refreshingly humane vision of this event: We find the young virgin sitting up in bed, gazing intently but unafraid into a theophanic manifestation of unearthly light. A luminous nimbus hovers quietly in her room—like a portal to another dimension—and we can almost hear an otherworldly whisper: “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.”

Unlike the sometimes-bombastic depictions of the Annunciation that echo superhero comics or Hollywood movies, Tanner’s version of this blessèd event is humble, quiet, and inviting. We are allowed to silently and reverently eavesdrop on this cosmically important conversation. Surprisingly, we find that we are truly welcomed into this intimate yet world-changing encounter. We are included. In fact, everyone is invited. This is the Savior of the World coming to us, for us, as one of us—our Emmanuel.

The warm tonalities of the room that Tanner has painted beckon to us. The golden light, the large expense of rusty red in the center of the painting, the subtle arches lending dignity to the event, the rich blue robe laid aside (Mary’s traditional symbol of heavenly calling), the rumpled blankets … all of these domestic details ask us to rest, to listen, to attend carefully to a message the entire human race has longed for since the loss of our intimacy with God post–Garden of Eden.

Here is blessing and redemption. Here is rest and joy and wonder.

Perhaps this is the central feeling Henry Ossawa Tanner has placed in this painting: quiet wonder. Not the melodrama of emotion usually associated with the supernatural. This is not magic or a display of occult power or some scary vision. This is the Creator-of-all sending an astounding message to an unimpor­tant village in a rural corner of the world to a young woman without status. The God of All Creation is humbling Himself.

Later, in the Gospel of Luke, when pregnant Mary visits her relative Elizabeth (herself pregnant with Jesus’ cousin John—later to become the Baptist) she recites a powerful poem she has composed in which the entire world is turned upside down. Plenty of drama is coming! She speaks with power and prophetic authority: A revolution is coming in which the last shall be first and the first shall be last. The last (the marginalized people) will be cared for, and the poor and the widow, the orphan, the stranger—those dear to God’s heart will be comforted. The first (the privileged and powerful and affluent) will be sent away empty having already had their reward of worldly goods and status.

Tanner grew up in Pittsburgh and later moved to Philadelphia, where his father became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. His mother, Sarah Elizabeth, was born into slavery in Virginia but having been freed, she later married Henry’s father Benjamin Tanner and became a leader and missionary in the AME church alongside her husband. Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner was close friends with Frederick Douglass and several other influential leaders of the city—all of them active in the abolition movement and in spreading both social reform and the gospel of Christ.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was educated at Avery College and Western Theological Seminary and later at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He was a close apprentice of the famous American painter Thomas Eakins who taught for many years there. Though Henry was well educated and a favorite of Eakins, he nevertheless faced racism and suppression of his art career—which he details in his autobiography. In the 1890s he moved to Paris where he was able to establish a thriving art career and earn enough prestige and affluence to allow him to travel widely, including to the Holy Land—where he made many sketches and smaller paintings and ­studied ardently to develop references for his larger Biblical paintings.

The Annunciation has many of the qualities art historians associate with Impressionism—a movement that Tanner encountered while living in Paris. The brushy, spontaneous quality of the paint, the richness of color, and loose handling of forms while retaining an essential realism.

Today Tanner’s works are in most major museum collections in the United States, and he is one of the few Christians whose Biblical works are taken seriously in the art world. His art has inspired generations of black artists, and he’s is often referred to as “the ­greatest African American painter in American history.” There is perhaps a certain historic justice that an African American, deprived of status and success here in America, should paint the moment in human history in which all forms of human judgment and honor are turned upside down, when the Messiah comes to a lowly woman whose humility and obedience became the occasion of radical change for us all.