ABSTRACT
In Konrad Witz's Annunciation of 1440, in Nuremberg, Gabriel and Mary hover awkwardly in a tilting space. For the European Middle Ages the Annunciation was less about space than about time. The Annunciation becomes visualized as vernacularization, with the script of the Bible, via the movement of translation, transformed quite literally, to speech, unfolding out into the world. Yet for Witz, the utterance of Gabriel appears as a document; the scene is less a vision than a material conveyance of information from place to place. Gabriel's speech, meanwhile, appears as miraculous airborne particles. As Gabriel speaks to the Virgin, that is, so should the lily vase, the Virginal bed, the open window, the cracked door, speak to the art historian. As surface and subject, inscription and object, the titulus or Schriftband in Northern pictures trouble the idea of a single, legible, informational register.
