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MARY'S BIRTH.

Several days before the Blessed Virgin's birth Anna had told Joachim
that the time was approaching for her to be delivered. She sent
messengers to Sephoris, where her younger sister Maraha lived; to the
widow Enue (sister of Elizabeth) in the valley of Zabulon; and to her
niece Mary Salome at Bethsaida, asking these three women to come to
her. I saw them on their journeys. The widow Enue had a serving lad
with her; the other two women were accompanied by their husbands who,
however, went back on approaching Nazareth. I saw that on the day
before Anna was delivered Joachim sent his many menservants out to the
herds, and among Anna's new maidservants he kept in the house only
those who were needed. He, too, went out into his nearest pasture. I
saw that Anna's firstborn daughter, Mary Heli, looked after the house.
She was then about nineteen years old and was married to Cleophas, one
of Joachim's chief shepherds, by whom she had a little daughter, Mary
Cleophas, now about four years old. After praying, Joachim chose out
his finest lambs, kids, and cattle, sending shepherds to take them to
the Temple as a thank-offering. He did not return home until nightfall.

I saw the three cousins arriving at Anna's house in the evening. They
went to her in her room behind the hearth and embraced her. After Anna
had told them that the time was near for her to be delivered, they
stood up and sang a hymn together: `Praise the Lord God; He has shown
mercy to His people, and has redeemed Israel, and has fulfilled the
promise which He gave to Adam in Paradise that the seed of the woman
should crush the head of the serpent,' and so on. I can no longer
recite it all by heart. Anna prayed as though in ecstasy. She
introduced into the hymn all the prophetic symbols of Mary. She said:
`The seed given by God to Abraham has ripened in me.' She spoke of the
promise to Sarah of Isaac's birth and said: `The blossoming of Aaron's
rod is perfected in me.' At that moment I saw her as though suffused
with light; I saw the room full of radiance, and Jacob's ladder
appearing above it. The women were overcome with astonishment and joy,
and I think that they also saw the vision. When the prayer of welcome
was over, the travelers were refreshed with a slight meal of bread and
fruit, and water mixed with balsam. They ate and drank standing up, and
then lay down till midnight to rest from their journey. Anna did not go
to bed, but prayed, and at midnight woke the other women to pray with
her. They followed her to her praying-place behind a curtain.

Anna opened the doors of a little cupboard in the wall which contained
a casket with holy objects. On each side were lights--perhaps lamps,
but I am not sure. They had to be pushed up in their holders, and then
little bits of shavings put underneath to prevent them from sinking
down. After this the lights were lit. There was a cushioned stool at
the foot of this sort of little altar. The casket contained some of
Sarah's hair (Anna had a great veneration for her), some of Joseph's
bones (brought by Moses from Egypt), and something belonging to Tobias,
I think a relic of his clothing; also the little shining, white,
pear-shaped goblet from which Abraham had drunk when blessed by the
angel. (This had been given to Joachim from the Ark of the Covenant
when he was blessed in the Temple. I now know that this blessing took
the form of wine and bread and was a strengthening and sacramental
food.)

Anna knelt before the little cupboard with one of the women on each
side and the third behind her. She recited another hymn; I think it
mentioned the burning bush of Moses. Then I saw the room filled with
supernatural light which became more intense as it wove itself round
Anna. The women sank to the ground as though stunned. The light round
Anna took the exact form of the burning bush of Moses on Horeb, and I
could no longer see her. The whole flame streamed inwards; and then I
suddenly saw that Anna received the shining child Mary in her hands,
wrapped her in her mantle, pressed her to her heart, and laid her naked
on the stool in front of the holy relics, still continuing her prayer.
Then I heard the child cry, and saw that Anna brought out wrappings
from under the great veil which enveloped her. She wrapped the child
first in gray and then in red swaddling bands up to her arms; her
breast, arms, and head were bare. The appearance of the burning bush
around Anna had now vanished.

The women stood up and received the newborn child in their arms with
great astonishment. They shed tears of joy. They all joined in a hymn
of praise, and Anna lifted her child up on high as though making an
offering. I saw at that moment the room full of light, and beheld
several angels singing Gloria and Alleluia.

Title: Le Canigou

Date Made: 1921

Artist: Juan Gris

Artist Bio: Spanish painter, sculptor, and illustrator, 1887-1927, active in France

Materials & Techniques: oil on canvas

Dimensions: overall: 34 3/4 x 48 5/8 x 2 3/4 inches (88.265 x 123.5075 x 6.985 cm)

Inscriptions: signature, dated, upper left, Juan Gris / 12-21; inscription, upper center, LE CANIGOU

Credit Line: Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1947

Description from Albright-Knox Art Gallery: Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942

To avoid the rigors of winter in Paris, Gris spent from late October 1921 to April 1922 in Ceret, a small town at the eastern end of the French Pyrenees. The window of his hotel room looked out onto the mountains, of which the Canigou was the highest peak. On 23 December 1921, he wrote to his friend and dealer Kahnweiler in Paris, "I am really enthusiastic about a picture I am beginning of the white peak of the Canigou covered with snow" (D. H. Kahnweiler, Letters of Juan Gris [London: 1956], 134). It is virtually certain that this remark refers to the painting in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

The problem of unifying a landscape viewed through an open window with a still life placed before it was not new to Gris's work. In his 1915 "Place Ravignan," now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he wove together a vista through his studio window and the boxes, bottles and papers placed on a table in front of it. Several other works dealing with this same problem date from 1921-22. Gris accomplished the integration of objects widely separated in distance, size and identity through careful analogies of form which establish sparse geometric accords on the picture surface. The peaks and sweeps of the mountain range are repeated in the upper triangular corner of the table, the lower contour of the guitar and the draped tablecloth at the bottom of the picture. Additional duplications of forms confound the identification of objects and their placement in space: the tilted ovoids of sound hole and goblet, the decorous upper curve of guitar and the identical contour below and to the right and the centerfold of the book, which appears to extend for the entire height of the canvas. The curiously irregular margin confuses the reality of painted image and frame, as does also the painted lettering at the top. Golden Section relationships, principally in the left side of the painting, create a fundamental sense of order and agreeable proportions. (Daniel J. Heenan has diagrammed this painting and has discovered at least 12 verifiable applications of the Golden Section along the painting's major linear axes [Gallery files]. Gris was a participant in the early "Section d'or" group discussions and 1912 exhibition. Specialized mathematical relationships figure in other of his works. See Canfeld, Art Bulletin, March 1965, p. 128f.)

Although Gris did not consider himself primarily a colorist, here he constructs elegant harmonies from a greatly restricted palette. Sober browns and greys, familiar Cubist tones, are modified by a chill and biting blue. This icy hue and the stark whites convey almost tangibly the crispness and clarity of a winter atmosphere and reaffirm the cold of which Gris continually complained in his letters.

ID Number: RCA1947:5