File talk:CD082710-11-ANNUNCIATION DETAIL ORATORY MURAL.jpg

The inspiration of the iconography of the Annunciation in this central canvas of "Beginnings and Awareness", as I first called the Oratory Mural, comes from one by Robert Campin, painted 1427-32, in which a circular table separates the approaching Angel discretely from Mary. But in mine I conceptually push the structural elements which are flattened into shallow space and the resulting psychology much further by making the table motif into a wheel - a circle of acceptance, whereby the Virgin on hearing the announcement is about to place her hand on its rim as her affirmation and accord of hers and her child's fate. The face of a second angel that appears behind her offering her a vision of the future is my addition which represents her consciousness looking upward to the Baptism above in this central canvas and to the left canvas The Escape in the Desert.

On an autobiographical note, the face of Mary comes from a drawing of my friend Linda, who had modelled for me the year before in the Jewess Accused and is the face of the woman sitting in Ship of Fools.

- Richard Rappaport