Bible Review

Quoted by the art historian Meyer Shapiro (“Muscipula diaboli: The Symbolism of the Merode Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin [1945], pp. 182–187), who came up with this most convincing interpretation.

See T.L. de Bruin, “Le Maitre de Flemalle et sa Crypto-Signature,” Gazette des Beaux Artes 67 (June 1966), pp. 5–6. This is an ingenious piece of detective work, but, of course, not all scholars agree with his conclusions.

The modern scholar who first ferreted out the disguised symbolic meaning of this and most of the objects in the Merode Altarpiece was the great art historian Erwin Panofsky. See Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953; reissue, New York: 1971).

See Klara Csillery, “A Bench with a Movable Rest,” Materialy 26 (Sanok, Poland: Muzeum Budownictwa Ludowego w Sanoku, 1980), in Polish with English abstract.

Latin Ave simply means “Hail” and refers to the angel’s greeting to Mary: Ave Maria.

For a different interpretation of this painting, see Leo Steinberg, “‘How Shall This Be?’ Reflections on Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation in London, Part I,” Artibus et Historiae 16 (1987), pp. 25–44.

Marian Poems from Muri.

For a translation of the infancy gospel, see J. Keith Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

Garry Wills, Why I Am a Catholic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 326.

Isaac Abravanel, Peirush ‘al-Ha-Neviim Ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem: Torah Ve-da’at, 1955–1956), p. 252 (in Hebrew).