A Private Mystery: Looking at Philippe de Champaigne’s Annunciation for the Hôtel de Chavigny

Mysteries elude immediate access. The core meaning of the Greek word μυστήριον (mystérion) is something that is hidden, and hence accessible only through some form of initiation or revelation.1 The key Christian mysteries concern the meeting between Heaven and Earth in the Incarnation and the soteriological grace wielded in Christ’s Passion and Resurrection as well as in the sacraments of the Church. Visual representations of the Christian mysteries strive to capture and convey what is hidden and to express the ineffable in a congruent way. Such representations are produced in historical contexts, and in their aspiration to represent motifs that transcend time and space and indeed embrace time and space, they are marked through and through by their own Sitz-im-Leben. Also, the viewers’ perceptions of such representations are embedded in a historical context. It is the key assumption of this chapter that early modern visual representations of mysteries are seen by human beings whose gaze and understanding are shaped by historical factors.2 We shall approach one such historical gaze. It belongs to a figure who navigated a particular space; who was born into a particular age and class; endowed with a particular set of experiences and aspirations; and informed by a particular devotional horizon. The figure whose gaze we shall approach is Léon Bouthillier, Comte de Chavigny (1608–1652). The mystery in focus is the Annunciation, and the visual representation is the Annunciation painted