Thalamus Dei. The Bed in Images of the Annunciation Its Iconography and Doctrinal Explanation

This book aims to documentarily demonstrate the underlying theological meanings of the conjugal bed in some medieval and Renaissance images of the Annunciation to Mary. To justify with academic rigor his iconographic interpretations of such furniture in these images, the author of the book analyzes an abundant corpus of texts in which, for more than a millennium, many medieval Fathers, theologians, and hymnographers of the Eastern and Western Churches explained with Mariological and Christological projection the textual metaphors thalamus Dei and other similar rhetorical figures alluding to marital coexistence. After an Introduction in which the iconographic problem raised by this bed in such images is highlighted, the book presents four chapters. The first exposes the exegeses given by the Fathers of the Greek-Eastern Churches on the reference metaphors. The second develops similar explanations by the Fathers and theologians of the Latin West. The third chapter documents a wide range of fragments of medieval Latin liturgical hymns that lyrically deal with the metaphors above. The fourth chapter consists of the iconographical analysis of twenty-five paintings of the Annunciation from the 14th and 15th centuries, whose scene includes a conjugal bed. Based on this millenary exegetical tradition, the author of the book criticizes some wrong or unjustified interpretations that several art historians have given of this bed in images of the Annunciation.