How do artists handle the challenge of attempting to depict a figure who lived a human life on earth – at a specific time and in specific places – but who was simultaneously divine, beyond place and time?
In this episode Chloë Reddaway shows how artists have used ‘place’ in their paintings to point to the limitations of our vision and understanding when pondering this mystery, focusing on the mysterious location of Lorenzo di Credi’s The Virgin and Child (c.1480–5) and the spatial metaphors at work in Filippo Lippi’s The Annunciation (c. 1450–3).
From The National Gallery.
