Ia Orana Maria

'Ia Orana Maria' (I Hail Thee, Mary) is among the most famous canvases from Gauguin's first Tahitian stay, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The work superimposes a Christian religious subject—the Annunciation or salutation of Mary—onto a Tahitian setting, with the angel appearing behind a Tahitian mother and child who take the roles of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin and Christ. This fusion of Christian iconography with Tahitian imagery was central to Gauguin's project of finding universal spiritual content beneath the surface differences of cultures.

The composition draws on the formal precedent of religious painting—an angelic figure addressing a mother and child—while translating all elements into Tahitian visual language: flattened forms, saturated tropical colors, and synthetist outlines. The angel's wings, painted in the brilliant yellow Gauguin reserved for supernatural presences, serve as the composition's chromatic anchor.