Advent, Day 16: Et incarnatus est

LOOK: Yoruba Madonna and Child

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This sculpture by a Yoruba artist from Nigeria shows the Christ child seated on the lap of his mother, Mary, who wears a traditional Yoruba hairstyle and dress. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably by George Bandele Areogun (1908–1995), as it is commensurate in quality and style with his other work.

The image appears as figure 27 in the 1974 book The Faces of Jesus by Frederick Buechner (which contains an excellent selection of full-color art from around the globe!) with the vague caption “Madonna and Child, wood, Africa, contemporary.” At the time of publication, the sculpture was in the private collection of Maurice Lavanoux (1894–1974), a specialist in church art living in New York, but I don’t know its current whereabouts.

It probably came out of the Oye-Ekiti workshop, established by the Society of African Missions (a Roman Catholic organization) and active from 1947 to 1954. If not, it is indebted to that initiative, which was key in establishing a Yoruba Christian style of art and cultivating patrons for such art. For more on the Oye-Ekiti workshop, see my review of the 2014 exhibition Africanizing Christian Art. For a more recent article, see “The Oye-Ekiti Christian Art Workshop and the Fusion of the European Catholic Tradition and Nigerian Indigenous Art in Three Lagos Churches” by Chinyere Ndubuisi, from Art in Translation 14, no. 3 (2022): 230–54.

LISTEN: “Et incarnatus est” (And was incarnate) by J. S. Bach, from his Mass in B minor, BWV 232, completed 1749 | Performed by Robin Johannsen, Marie-Claude Chappuis, Helena Rasker, Sebastian Kohlhepp, Christian Immler, and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, dir. René Jacobs, 2022

Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto,
ex Maria virgine; et homo factus est.

English translation:
And [he] was incarnate by the Holy Spirit,
of the Virgin Mary; and was made man.

Comprising twenty-seven movements in four parts, Bach’s B minor setting of the Latin Mass is widely regarded as one of the highest achievements of classical music. “Et incarnatus est” is the fourth movement of part 2, “Symbolum Nicenum” (Nicene Creed).

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This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.