2004, Beeswax on Plaster.
28x25x33cm
This is derived from a drawing from the old master Boscoli - See scan from my notebook. Boscoli depicted Gabriel as an adolescent boy since that is the traditional way to depict angels, but in this case I felt it was inappropriate to have an adolescent boy in the room of a fourteen year old girl (Which the Virgin was when she conceived). So I've depicted Gabriel as a woman as the medieval artists did.
The pots beneath Gabriel are a device to support her. I got the idea of using pots from a medieval artist who painted Moses going up the mountain with three pots containing three fires and three angels blowing three trumpets - three being the number of God. So I have used seven vessels, seven being the number of Jesus. There are three pots, three being the number of God, on four pots, four being the number of man. They also allude to the wedding at Cana.
Large image of this sculpture (85 KBytes).
