As we continue our artistic countdown to Christmas, looking at new artworks from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection presenting different episodes in the story of Christ's birth, I have another image to present this week of the Annunciation. It is a tempera on gessoed wood panel painting of the Angel Gabriel's appearance to the Virgin Mary, announcing she will be the mother of the Messiah, by Ulyana Tomkevych, one of a group of contemporary Ukrainian Greek Catholic icon-makers from the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine, who are pushing the boundaries of this traditional sacred art form in their use of color, decorative motifs, and modernist-influenced, geometric compositions. Gabriel’s wings shoot upward to form a leaf pattern. He brings a gift of lilies, an emblem of Mary’s purity. She holds thread she has been spinning for a new veil for the Temple in Jerusalem, the same curtain torn apart at the Crucifixion. The Tomkevych Annunciation scene is now on view in the New Iconography of Lviv page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)