That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for April 18, 2017

“The hard part will be convincing Joseph.”

Angel giving Mary the bird.

When you look at these 19th century works, you can’t help but ne struck by the technical skill shown. At the same time, you can’t help but notice the complete lack of originality. Here’s the angel, dumping the word on Mary: “Guess what, chickie, you get to bear a son who’s going to be a really bigly mover & shaker.” She’s like, “Uh, you know, Joe and I, like, we haven’t actually gone beyond heavy petting, you know?” Same moment, same interpretation. same approach as hundreds of other beautifully painted Annunciations.

Anyway, here’s a quickie:

“Julius Schnorr Von Carolsfeld. Born Leipzig, 26 March 1794 – Died Dresden, 24 May 1872.Julius Schnorr Von Carolsfeld was a painter and draughtsman, brother of Ludwig Ferdinand Schnorr von Carolsfeld. He was taught engraving by his father and then trained under Heinrich Füger at the Akademie in Vienna (1811–15). Though not particularly excited by the curriculum, he was inspired by his friendship with Ferdinand Olivier and Joseph Anton Koch and the circle around A. W. Schlegel to an interest in both landscape sketching (examples of pen-and-ink drawings from this period in the Albertina, Vienna) and in old German and Netherlandish art, as reflected in the style of the detailed pen drawing of the Prodigal Son (1816; Dresden, Kupferstichkab.).From 1815 to 1818 he lived in the house of Ferdinand Olivier, whose step-daughter, Marie Heller, he later married. A painting of 1817, St Roch Distributing Alms (Leipzig, Mus. Bild. Kst.), is an excellent record of this period, as it contains portraits of Ferdinand Olivier and Marie Heller, and a landscape background similar to that sketched by Schnorr von Carolsfeld with Ferdinand and Friedrich Olivier around Salzburg.”

See www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/romanticism/Franz-Pforr-and-the-Nazarenes.html. The page gives the history of the artist’s group known as the Nazarenes. The painting is in the Nationalgalerie Berlin.

There’s also a full monograph on the Nazarenes at http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/german/gossman.html. The drawing of the Prodigal Son theme is easily found; one nice version with some information about it is at www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/german/schnorr/118.html.

Gabriel filling Mary in about all the effects that pregnancy will do to her body.

For the French speakers in the group:Qu’est-ce que l’ange a dit a la Vierge Marie?“Je viens pour l’annonce.”

“And, oh, by the way, He’s a little miffed that you haven’t responded to His friend request.”

" I don’t care what he says. Tell Bill Reilly that I am not interested ! "

2 URLs (copy each as one line):

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Julius_Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_-_Annunciation_-_WGA21011.jpg

has info and links that point to info about this painting (best viewed by Google Chrome – can automatically translate pages if necessary). So far, 2 works by this artist have been used here.

http://www.gocomics.com/that-is-priceless/2012/01/19?comments=visible

has the prior strip (where I just posted a comment).

Again, a larger strip image is shown by clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s MASTERPIECE #1689 (April 17, 2017) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment; so, I won’t point to it here.

I know you messed around on joseph, so god said he would cover for you this time only.

mary says to herself, where have i heard that line a dozen times before…?

“Am I speaking clearly enough Mary? The Big Guy said I had to come and enunciate”