A Mystery Window: The Annunciation at Grouville

The Annunciation Window at Grouville Church is one of the strangest I have ever seen.It is not conventional in any sense. The Virgin Mary is neither dressed in white, or wearing blue, and her face and hair style - short! - must surely be contemporaneous with the period the window was created, in the mid-Victorian period.

Red is more associated with Mary Magdalene (because of the false history of her as a reformed prostitute). It is colour used for depicting passion.

But in Russian icons, for example, the Virgin Mary more commonly wore red but usually a whole ensemble of red with blue beneath. On other occasions, she was portrayed in white to represent her innocence.

It is however atypical for Western art. I've looked at hundreds of images of Mary in stained glass and have yet to find anything close to this strange colour scheme for her clothes.

The green sleeves are also distinctly odd. Green as the color of grass and nature can be an indication of spring, growth and rebirth, life over death, and can symbolise faith, immortality, and contemplation.

The lily Gabriel holds symbolizes purity and is conventional, but is rather larger than is normally the case. Both the faces of Mary and Angel Gabriel seem more sketched from life than traditional iconography.

Unfortunately there is no information on record (or name) of the maker or designer of this stained glass, only the date it was placed there.

The Fleur de Lis is an age-old symbol for lily, a sign of the resurrection. The whiteness and purity of the lily is said to represent Mary, mother of Jesus. The three petals also represent the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

By way of contrast, here is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini, 1849-50, which while naturalistic is very much more conventional in that Mary has long hair.

And here is a much more traditional Annunciation in a stained glass window from Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey (Catalonia, Spain) - Mary in blue.

And here's a modern variant, again Mary is in blue.

Another mystery is the tree and the stars in the bottom of the window. What does that symbolise?

And more symbols can be found at the right bottom:

Scallop shells are a symbol of triune baptism, but while Trinitarian, what is the meaning of the other threesome symbols? Those peculiar red symbols in particular are very strange. What are the strange fish?

Mary's Hair

The hairstyle of Mary is unusual. Most Victorian women wore their hair very long, or (if upper class) in what was known as the "up-do", hair piled high on the head. However, there are some instances of shorter hair:

Here is a short version of the "up-do" style.

Another with shorter hair

And a painting of the young Victoria.