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拍品專文
Several suggestions as to the authorship of this beautifully detailed panel have in the past been put forward, including most recently artists from the circles of Barthélemy d'Eyck and Hans Memling. In composition, it seems to derive from Rogierian prototypes, from the basic situation of the scene in the Virgin's bedroom, to the figure types. So, for example, the position of the Virgin, her book open on her hand, relates to the grisaille figure in the upper tier of the outside right wing of Rogier's polyptych of The Last Judgement (Beaune, Musée de l'Hôtel-Dieu), whilst that of Gabriel recalls that first found in the Annuncation triptych in the Louvre, Paris.
Both figures display a fair degree of adaptation, most noticeably in the transposition of their kneeling and standing positions, and one wonders whether to infer from this evidence of the artist's own adaptations, or instead the existence of a lost intermediary painting. The development of Gabriel's stance in the mid-sixteenth-century Annunciation by Marcellus Coffermans in the Burrell Collection might perhaps lend some support to the latter theory, as perhaps does its adaptation in the mid-fifteenth century copy of the figure in the Louvre triptych in the fragmentary Angel of the Annunciation by a member of Rogier's workshop in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz (as well as similarly in the following lot in the present sale).
Either way, the artist's stylistic similarities with the work of Jan Provoost are noticeable: one might compare the head of the Virgin in the present painting with that in Provoost's Virgin and Child in the Museo Civico, Cremona (M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, IXa, Leiden and Brussels, 1973, no. 166, pl. 178), or that of Gabriel in the grisaille figure on the reverse of an altarpiece wing depicting Saint Andrew (Haarlem, Bisschoppelijk Museum). The evident debt to Rogier van der Weyden and the affinities to the work of Memling are similarly to be found in Provoost's work; compositionally, however, the latter never repeated himself, striving instead to avoid established formulae, so the absence of any more direct compositional link betweeen his work and the present painting - or, if it derives from a lost prototype by Provoost, between this and works by earlier artists - is unsurprising.
Given Provoost's fondness for iconographical originality, the extensive level of such detail in this painting is similarly to be expected. Throughout, the iconographical sub-plots of the picture, representing key prefigurations of the Annunciation, are represented with remarkable attention: the Virgin's book is open at an illumination depicting Isaiah receiving from God the celebrated prophecy 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel' (Isaiah, VII; v. 14); the portable altarpiece represents the story of Gideon and the fleece (Judges, VI; vv. 36-40. In order to determine by sign whether or not God would deliver Israel, Gideon had proposed to God that the wetting of the fleece while the ground around it remained dry would signify God's promise of action; Gideon kneels as the fleece receives rain from an angel. Christians came to see this event as a prefiguration of the Annunciation, when God again delivered humanity, this time through Christ); and the stained glass roundels in the window depict the Fall of Man and the Expulsion, from which Christ would redeem mankind. It is hard to make out the identities of the figures on Gabriel's cope, which are presumably similarly relevant, although his horns identify that on the left shoulder as Moses, suggesting that they might be the Prophets, suitable for the archangel's role as the messenger of God.
Both figures display a fair degree of adaptation, most noticeably in the transposition of their kneeling and standing positions, and one wonders whether to infer from this evidence of the artist's own adaptations, or instead the existence of a lost intermediary painting. The development of Gabriel's stance in the mid-sixteenth-century Annunciation by Marcellus Coffermans in the Burrell Collection might perhaps lend some support to the latter theory, as perhaps does its adaptation in the mid-fifteenth century copy of the figure in the Louvre triptych in the fragmentary Angel of the Annunciation by a member of Rogier's workshop in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz (as well as similarly in the following lot in the present sale).
Either way, the artist's stylistic similarities with the work of Jan Provoost are noticeable: one might compare the head of the Virgin in the present painting with that in Provoost's Virgin and Child in the Museo Civico, Cremona (M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, IXa, Leiden and Brussels, 1973, no. 166, pl. 178), or that of Gabriel in the grisaille figure on the reverse of an altarpiece wing depicting Saint Andrew (Haarlem, Bisschoppelijk Museum). The evident debt to Rogier van der Weyden and the affinities to the work of Memling are similarly to be found in Provoost's work; compositionally, however, the latter never repeated himself, striving instead to avoid established formulae, so the absence of any more direct compositional link betweeen his work and the present painting - or, if it derives from a lost prototype by Provoost, between this and works by earlier artists - is unsurprising.
Given Provoost's fondness for iconographical originality, the extensive level of such detail in this painting is similarly to be expected. Throughout, the iconographical sub-plots of the picture, representing key prefigurations of the Annunciation, are represented with remarkable attention: the Virgin's book is open at an illumination depicting Isaiah receiving from God the celebrated prophecy 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel' (Isaiah, VII; v. 14); the portable altarpiece represents the story of Gideon and the fleece (Judges, VI; vv. 36-40. In order to determine by sign whether or not God would deliver Israel, Gideon had proposed to God that the wetting of the fleece while the ground around it remained dry would signify God's promise of action; Gideon kneels as the fleece receives rain from an angel. Christians came to see this event as a prefiguration of the Annunciation, when God again delivered humanity, this time through Christ); and the stained glass roundels in the window depict the Fall of Man and the Expulsion, from which Christ would redeem mankind. It is hard to make out the identities of the figures on Gabriel's cope, which are presumably similarly relevant, although his horns identify that on the left shoulder as Moses, suggesting that they might be the Prophets, suitable for the archangel's role as the messenger of God.