We begin the countdown to Christmas this month with a look at three thoroughly modern images from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection of the Annunciation, the moment when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her she would give birth to the Christ Child, found in the Luke 1:26-38. The event is traditionally celebrated in the church calendar in March, but as the opening scene in the drama of the Incarnation, it is a good theme to take us into the Advent Season. My first modernist art offering of the Virgin Mary's angelic encounter is a woodcut (left) by American Jesuit Artist John P. Love, who mastered Japanese woodblock printing, while teaching Western art in Tokyo. It is hard to tell exactly who is who in this pair of spiralling forms so suggestive of Asian calligraphy, unlike the drawing of Italian Futurist Mino delle Site, where the words of Gabriel's opening salutation in Latin, Ave Maria, hang suspended in the air above him amid the agitated black ink strokes which give form to the Virgin and the Angel. In contrast, soft tonal variations in pencil define the figures of Mary and Gabriel in our third art selection, a sketch for a painting of the Annunciation by Irakli Parjiani, a leading modernist artist from the Caucasian Mountain nation of Georgia, whose work shows the influence of traditional Georgian Orthodox iconography and folk art. The trio of new images can be found be in The Annunciation page of The Coming of Christ gallery in The Life of Christ section. You can also read a meditation on French Graphic Artist Christian Wouters enigmatic interior scene, Annunciation, in the Art Reflections gallery of the Moments with Masters section. (John Kohan)