The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, described in the Gospel of Luke. The iconography focuses on the Virgin's purity. Her swoon foreshadows the crucifixion of Jesus, and the painting emphasizes her role as mother, bride, and Queen of Heaven. The painting was executed in the 1480s. It was discovered in the early 19th century on an estate of the Radziwiłł family, in whose collection it might have been since the 16th century. It was purchased by the banker Philip Lehman in 1920, was transferred to canvas from its original oak panel sometime after 1928, and is today part of the Robert Lehman collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1847 the art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen described the panel as one of Memling's "finest and most original works".
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annunciation_%28Memling%29
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1891:
Frances Coles was killed in the last of eleven unsolved murders of women that took place in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitechapel_murders
1961:
Geode prospectors near Olancha, California, discovered what they claimed to be a 500,000-year-old rock with a 1920s-era spark plug encased within (pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coso_artifact
2017:
Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated using VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-nam
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
radiogram: 1. (telegraphy, historical) Synonym of radiotelegram (“a message, like a telegram, transmitted by wireless telegraphy (“telegraphy by radio rather than by transmission cables”)”) 2. (radio, historical) Synonym of radiogramophone (“a gramophone record player that incorporates a radio receiver”) [...] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/radiogram
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
We must not forget that in our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous. --Robert H. Jackson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson