#57 Ia Orana Maria — Coaster

The title is Tahitian for *Hail Mary*, and it is an Annunciation with everything moved. Mary and the infant Christ are Tahitian, both wearing haloes, and the angel is half hidden behind the flowering tree on the left with only its wings and face showing. Gauguin painted it in his first year on the island, and sent it back to Paris as proof that he had found what he went looking for. He called it the best thing he had done. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.