Lamentation and Annunciation

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This paper is a study of a thirteenth-century fresco of the lamentation of the Virgin in the Church of the Virgin Peribleptos (St. Clement's) in Ohrid, Macedonia, which is positioned vertically adjacent to a fresco of the Annunciation at the well. The placement of the scenes — one of conception, the other of death, one of joy, the other of grief — situates the frescos in conversation. Together the images explicitly link Mary's sorrow to her role as mother. The paper compares these iconographic depictions with Gregory of Nyssa's fourth-century ascetic theology of grief, which similarly employs the maternal figure to exemplify sorrow and grieving by linking mourning, virginity, and reproduction. The paper argues that the theology suggested by the iconography is a radical departure from understandings of grief in ascetical writings of figures like Gregory, which remained influential in the thirteenth century even as an alternative understanding and valuation of grief was forming and being disseminated through media including iconography and hymnography.