The Annunciation Triptych: How the Engelbrechts Saw It

Authors

Elizabeth ParkerFollow

Abstract

The Annunciation Triptych (aka the Mérode Altarpiece) at the Met Cloisters has continued to be the object of intense study over the years. This essay considers the position of the triptych on the borderline of medieval art and focuses on the medieval context for longstanding liturgical and devotional practices dedicated to the Virgin of the Annunciation that inform its meaning. The ultimate goal of the patrons’ contemplation was to identify with her experience of the Incarnation. The layered scriptural readings of monastic meditation that Richard of Saint-Victor transformed into four modes of seeing allow for levels of understanding within and beyond the depicted elements of contemporary life. Medieval artists’ cultivation of an empathetic viewer response, fortified by optical science developed in the thirteenth century, enabled a reciprocal engagement between the viewer and the image at the astonishing level of immediacy and refinement that came to fruition in early fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting and can be seen to be at play in this triptych.

Recommended Citation

Parker, Elizabeth (2025) "The Annunciation Triptych: How the Engelbrechts Saw It," Studies in Iconography: Vol. 46, Article 6.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/studies_in_iconography/vol46/iss1/6