Nazareth means flower in Hebrew.
Mary was the fiancée of someone called Joseph. One day the Angel entered Mary’s home.

Art is the discussion regarding the Other, the extraneous to our consciousness which needs doors and windows (our complexes) in order to make itself be present. Without these passages the dialogue with the divine is interrupted, there is no light able to penetrate and produce new fruit.
The apparition of the Angel – be this fax, telephone, television, computer or whatever other means of communication of today’s collective imaginary – reveals the positive nature of the attitude of Mary-flower vis-à-vis the contents that surface from the interior world. The Angel materially manifests itself to her eyes. It is a dream, a vision or, in any case, a state in which what appears is not the physical universe but something that comes from another dimension and that transcends subjective being.
The motif of the Angel recalls that of the helping bird. A figure which seems to be particularly suited for representing the ‘go-between’ of sky and earth, matter and the spirit, consciousness and the unconscious, between God and the mortal. For the alchemists it was the volatile substance that was freed during the process of the transmutation of matter and we could add that it is the intuition which shows itself at the walls of our house-consciousness. The Angel is the artist or Mary, he or she who brings the news of the change that is about to take place. The message finds its means of access amidst the open spaces of the soul. Mary-flower, therefore, a woman on hand to receive and give by way of the same fissure. A joy which helps to understand.
The new advances by beating a large part of the values which block the development of Man, constructing on the good that remains. In consequence, the creative act is at one and the same time destruction and construction. We cannot speak about a/the “work of art” if from the historical point of view this does not offer a sign of spiritual and material renewal. The work of art is such when it represents something that is objectively important for culture and the community.
Behold I am the maidservant of the Lord. The Madonna kneels, she has listened to the announcement and her individuality is at the service of something greater which goes beyond the shame of a sin that excludes her from the rules of social life and from collective reason. This is the quality of the creative man. The completed betrayal expresses the fidelity to what is most profound in him. The award is that of being able to be reborn and be bearer of the new. Thus to create means giving birth to oneself, to enter a second existence. The heroes in myths always have a double mother and a double father. If earthly parents above all carry out the task of moulding/forming our body then the onus of designing the form suited to our presence is up to us.
Then the Angel left her. The theme now is that of the Annunciation. Mary is alone and looks at the world with new eyes.

by Giuseppe Pansini