Mariae Domuncula
Reconstructing and Recomposing the Domesticity of the Annunciation
Academic Course Theory and Techniques of Architectural Figuration (FIRE2) | EPFL - LAPIS | Nicola Braghieri, Filippo Fanciotti | 2024-2025
Topic
In the figurative tradition of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the Italian peninsula and Flanders, Mary’s house is configured as a spatial device intended to translate the Gospel text of the Annunciation into images. The “sacred house” thus becomes the place where the theological event is inscribed within architectural coordinates, through the search for a classical language and a perspectival order still in the process of definition.
The scene is modulated according to a dual register: tragic, in staging the solemnity of the Regina Caeli; comic, in conveying the humility of the Ancilla Domini. The canonical moments of the exegetical tradition — conturbatio, cogitatio, interrogatio, humiliatio, meritatio — unfold within the domestic space, which assumes the function of an eloquent “third character” in the sacred representation.
External Link
Mariae Domuncula
FIRE2/2025
In the figurative tradition of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the Italian peninsula and Flanders, Mary’s house is configured as a spatial device intended to translate the Gospel text of the Annunciation into images. The “sacred house” thus becomes the place where the theological event is inscribed within architectural coordinates, through the search for a classical language and a perspectival order still in the process of definition.
The scene is modulated according to a dual register: tragic, in staging the solemnity of the Regina Caeli; comic, in conveying the humility of the Ancilla Domini. The canonical moments of the exegetical tradition — conturbatio, cogitatio, interrogatio, humiliatio, meritatio — unfold within the domestic space, which assumes the function of an eloquent “third character” in the sacred representation.
External Link
Mariae Domuncula
FIRE2/2025
Exercise
The exercise consists in producing a diptych composed of two plausible images based on a painting representing Mary’s room, as it was depicted through the eyes of artists working between Italy and Flanders in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Reconstruction – The first image will be a precise and plausible restitution of the painting, including a realistic interpretation of the elements that compose it (volumes, surfaces, and lighting), with the exception of human beings and other animals.
Recomposition – The second image will propose the composition of a new image, based on the given painting, by modifying the point of view (privileging that of the angel Gabriel) and, if appropriate, other characteristics such as perspective, lighting, and so forth. This new image will be conceived as an allegory of an idea of architecture.
The two images will correspond to the following proposition, which implies a narrative: an interior space containing an opening onto the outside and/or an opening onto the inside; that is, a threshold between interior and exterior, a snapshot poised between a before and an after. For this reason, if the first image does not frame an opening onto the outside world, such an opening must be made visible in the recomposition.
The exercise consists in producing a diptych composed of two plausible images based on a painting representing Mary’s room, as it was depicted through the eyes of artists working between Italy and Flanders in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Reconstruction – The first image will be a precise and plausible restitution of the painting, including a realistic interpretation of the elements that compose it (volumes, surfaces, and lighting), with the exception of human beings and other animals.
Recomposition – The second image will propose the composition of a new image, based on the given painting, by modifying the point of view (privileging that of the angel Gabriel) and, if appropriate, other characteristics such as perspective, lighting, and so forth. This new image will be conceived as an allegory of an idea of architecture.
The two images will correspond to the following proposition, which implies a narrative: an interior space containing an opening onto the outside and/or an opening onto the inside; that is, a threshold between interior and exterior, a snapshot poised between a before and an after. For this reason, if the first image does not frame an opening onto the outside world, such an opening must be made visible in the recomposition.
