Emily Dickinson once wrote that hope is the thing with feathers. As we begin our Advent reflections, I want to suggest that Fra Filippo Lippi might well agree. His Annunciation (c. 1450-3), painted for the Medici family places feathers at the core of his vision of the hope of incarnation and salvation. 

The angel Gabriel has arrived to bring the news to Mary that she will become the theotokos, the God-bearer. His wings of peacock feathers dominate his half the composition, curving to fit the panel’s unusual over-door shape. They remain unfurled, evoking the immediacy and immanence of this emissary episode. Nearby, the Holy Spirit, represented as a dove, hovers before Mary’s belly. Its tiny wings, a visual echo of those of the angel, ripple with motion, drawing our eyes to the hand of God the Father, who initiates this miraculous encounter. 

Lippi situates this scene not in first century Nazareth, but within the Medici Palazzo, recognisable by the feathered family emblem visible on the low wall at the centre. Embedding the incarnation in his audience’s familiar world, his message is clear: hope is not distant or abstract but alive and present among us. The feathers, tangible yet weightless, remind us that God’s promise takes flight in the here and now. 

The tension between the gentle fragility of feathers and their collective strength to allow wing-bearers to take flight, is an apposite metaphor indeed for the power of hope. As we reflect on this work and begin our advent journey in these uncertain times, let us be active in seeking out that anticipatory hope in our own contexts. Like Dickinson’s metaphorical bird and Lippi’s dove, hope may be fragile, but it is resilient, always poised to take flight.