The Annunciation

This intriguing little panel is actually a composite construction: the left and right elements were formerly the pinnacles of the wings of a triptych, while the center – where the vase of lilies has been painted in – is a modern addition created to give a cohesiveness to the scene after the original structure had been dismantled and the present one invented. Notwithstanding this intervention, the figures at left and right – respectively, the Angel Gabriel and the Annunciate Virgin – are well-preserved, and the scene reads well in its new arrangement: while the figures would originally have interacted with each other across the expanse of an intervening panel, probably showing the Madonna and Child Enthroned, here they meet each other directly at the moment Gabriel informs Mary of her divine burden.

The style in which the figures are painted reveals close similarities to the work of Andrea di Bonaiuto, a Florentine painter active in the mid-14th century who may have worked with the Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna, one of the preeminent artists of the previous generation who ran a thriving workshop in the city. Particularly comparable are a pair of pinnacles now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (fig. 1), in which the physiognomy of Gabriel and Mary are notably similar and in which the decoration of the richly tooled gold ground is comparable. In both works, a similarly described brocaded carpet appears beneath the figures along with an ornately embellished Cloth of Honor, whose hand-tooled design appears to be almost identical in this and the Capidimonte panel.

We are grateful to Dr. Laurence B. Kanter for suggesting the present attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection.