The etching is by Rogier Van der Weyden and is in the Louvre, one of the earliest 15th Century drawings by a Flemish Master. I have a print of this in my study. The delicacy and intensity of the gaze and the precise definition of the sketching contrasts with the sense of mystery, the artist's search for the ideal a creative metaphor for our own search for those glimpses of the love and grace of the God who comes to us in Word made flesh, and does so through the yes of a young woman. Beauty and courage, trust and risk, Divine calling and human scandal, confident angelic annunciation and free human assent - so heaven and earth are brought together through the Gift of God and the generous receptive will of a woman, and the birth of a child.
The poem below comes from an age which we in our sophisticated postmodern mindset might dare to call credulous - but it was also an age when the human capacity for wonder was a recognised way of knowing, and an essential element of wonder. I wonder where the wonder went?
Wit Wonders
A God and yet a man,
A maid and yet a mother:
Wit wonders what wit can
Conceive this or the other.
A God and can he die?
A dead man can he live?
What wit can well reply?
What reason reason give?
God, Truth itself doth teach it.
Man’s wit sinks too far under
By reason’s power to reach it:
Believe and leave to wonder.
(Anonymous – 15th C)
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