Scripture · Luke 2:7
Luke 1:39-40
The Visitation
In those days Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judah, where she entered the home of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
A woman in a bright doorway extends her hand toward another who raises both arms. A table and bowl of oranges give Tanner’s encounter a domestic setting.
About the artwork
A bowl of oranges sits between the two women, but their gestures carry the meeting across the table. The woman in the doorway extends a hand; the woman in blue raises both of hers. The room remains recognizable as a place where people eat and work, even as an unexpected greeting fills it.
When a painting probably identifiable as this one appeared in Chicago in 1911, critic Harriet Monroe found it less religious than some of Tanner’s landscapes. Her response raises a useful question about the scene’s domestic character. Luke also locates the meeting in a house: the extraordinary recognition takes place through a visitor’s greeting and another woman’s answer. The table and fruit need no invented symbolism to make that encounter tangible.
Featured in: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris
Featured in: Top 10 Visitation Paintings Explained: When Mary Meets Elizabeth
What does Luke 1:39-40 mean?
After Gabriel tells Mary that Elizabeth is also expecting a child, Mary travels to the hill country of Judah. Luke 1:39–40 brings her into Zechariah’s house, where she greets Elizabeth. The following verses describe the child moving within Elizabeth and her Spirit-filled recognition of Mary as the mother of her Lord.
The two pregnancies are joined in this meeting, before either child is born. Reading the woman at the doorway as the arriving Mary fits Luke’s sequence, although Tanner does not label the figures. The raised hands can then be approached as Elizabeth’s astonished response, with the identification kept open rather than forced from their apparent ages.
Luke’s account gives Tanner’s domestic greeting its narrative setting: Mary comes to Elizabeth, and recognition begins with the sound of her voice.
Sources
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (2005.11); oil on canvas, 95.3 × 108 cm.
Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Luke 1 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Luke 1:39-40.
Philadelphia Museum of Art — Henry Ossawa Tanner (1991). Exhibition catalogue by Dewey F. Mosby, Darrel Sewell and Rae Alexander-Minter; exact-work entries and documented reception.
Also from Luke:The Angel Appearing to ZachariasAnnunciation
Continue looking:Mary Went into the Hill CountryVisitation on the Staircase of SilencioThe Foolish Virgins