What Is the Meaning of Iconography in Art Simone Martinis Annunciation Altarpiece

The painting represents the archangel Gabriel, who announces the nascency of Jesus to the Virgin Mary. [one] [1]
Luke i:26–38. For the iconography of the scene, cf. David M. Robb, "The Iconography of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," The Fine art Bulletin 18 (1936): 480–526; Giacomo Prampolini, 50'annunciazione nei pittori primitivi italiani (Milan, 1939); and the more recent studies past Julia Liebrich, Dice Verkündigung an Maria: Die Ikonographie der italienischen Darstellungen von den Anfängen bis 1500 (Cologne, 1997); and Daniel Arasse, 50'Annonciation italienne: Une histoire de perspective (Paris, 1999). Marco Pie­rini'southward comment (2000) describing the archangel's mode of presenting himself to the Virgin, with his left mitt placed on his breast, as a "posa quasi indolente" (almost indolent pose), is a misinterpretation of the image. This gesture is in fact far from rare (cf. Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Angel of the Annunciation in the church building of Montesiepi) and should be interpreted as an expression of sincerity and inwardness. Cf. Marco Pierini, Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2000), 207; Daniel Arasse, L'Annonciation italienne: Une histoire de perspective (Paris, 1999), 80–81; and François Garnier, Le langage de l'image au Moyen Age, vol. 1, Signification et symbolique (Paris, 1982), 184–185.  It clearly presupposes a complementary image of the Virgin Annunciate in a split panel, which in fact has e'er been recognized in the Virgin Annunciate now in the Hermitage in Petrograd [fig. one] [fig. 1] Simone Martini, Virgin of the Announcement, c. 1330, tempera on panel, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. © The Land Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg/Vladimir Terebinen, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets . The latter, identical to the Washington panel in format and in its ornamental punched decoration, comes from the Roman drove of Count Gregory Stroganoff (1829–1910) and entered the Hermitage after the collector's decease. [2] [2]
No. GE 284; 30.5 × 21.5 cm.  The ii halves of the diptych probably were separated in the nineteenth century, given that the very similar state of conservation of the ii panels suggests a similar fate: the paint surface of both was ruined past drastic overcleaning, probably at the time of their separation in the mid-nineteenth century, when they appeared on the Italian art market.

In 1901, when it was still in the Stroganoff collection in Rome, [three] [iii]
Giovanni Bernardini (1901) wrote that the minor panel was "forse da attribuire al grande artista senese" (perhaps to exist attributed to the great Sienese artist), presumably echoing Stroganoff'due south own attribution. Giovanni Bernardini, "Alcuni di­pinti della collezione del conte Stroganoff in Roma," Rassegna d'arte ane (1901): 119. The painting was then exhibited in Siena in 1904 as no. 38 in Room XXVII, under the name of Simone. Mostra dell'antica arte senese: Catalogo generale (Siena, 1904), no. 38. The attribution was accepted by F. Mason Perkins (1904), Adolfo Venturi (1907), Robert Langton Douglas (1908), Bernard Berenson (1909), and others. Run into F. Bricklayer Perkins, "La pittura alla mostra d'arte antica a Siena," Rassegna d'arte iv (1904): 146; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, vol. 5, La pittura del Trecento due east le sue origini (Milan, 1907), 629; Robert Langton Douglas, in A History of Painting in Italia from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and Northward Italian Schools, by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle (London, 1908), 69 n. ii; Bernard Berenson, The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (New York, 1909), 252.  Giovanni Bernardini recognized the Virgin Annunciate now in Russia, albeit with some uncertainty, as an autograph work by Simone Martini. It was nearly unanimously [iv] [iv]
George Martin Richter (1929) at first proposed the name of Paolo di Giovanni Fei for the panel at present in St. Petersburg but later inverse his mind (1941), attributing the painting instead to a "close follower" of Simone, perhaps to exist identified with Donato Martini. Thereafter the 2 leaves of the diptych were mainly discussed together. Cf. George Martin Richter, "Simone Martini Problems," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 54 (1929): 171–173; George Martin Richter, "The New National Gallery in Washington," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177.  recognized as a work by the Sienese main after its display at Mostra dell'antica arte senese in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in 1904. Lionello Venturi then identified the epitome of the Affections of the Annunciation every bit the companion panel of the sometime Stroganoff Virgin Annunciate in 1935. [5] [v]
Manuscript expertise dated July 2, 1935 (re-create in NGA curatorial files).  Venturi'due south opinion was confirmed in manuscript opinions by Adolfo Venturi, F. Mason Perkins (both without date), Giuseppe Fiocco, and Wilhelm Suida (both dated 1938). [6] [6]
Copies of the opinions of Fiocco, Perkins, Suida, and Adolfo Venturi are in NGA curatorial files.  The first catalog of the National Gallery of Art (1941) likewise accepted the attribution to Simone Martini, citing a written expertise past Roberto Longhi, who confirmed Simone'southward authorship, and the stance of Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) Fine art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United States with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin School, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful application for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, 'Art prevails in this programme because it is there that I experience myself weakest. One tin study literature here . . . but art non at all.' On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed by friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the decision to settle in Italia and to devote his life to the report of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Fine art © Oxford Academy Press , who rejected the attribution. [seven] [7]
National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture(Washington, DC, 1941), 184–185. Copies of the opinions of Bernard Berenson and Roberto Longhi are in NGA curatorial files.  In the subsequent literature opinions were divided: numerous publications accepted the attribution to Simone, [eight] [viii]
Michel Laclotte, De Giotto à Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les musées de French republic (Paris, 1956), 28; Michel Laclotte, L'École d'Avignon: La peinture en Provence aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris, 1960), 32; Michel Laclotte and Dominique Thiébaut, L'École d'Avignon (Paris, 1983), 118 northward. 10; François Enaud, "Les fresques de Simone Martini à Avignon," Les monuments historiques de la France 9 (1963): 163, 177 north. 161; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Drove: Italian Schools, XIII–15 Century (London, 1966), 48; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Cardinal Italian and North Italian Schools, iii vols. (London, 1968), ii:405 (but since this is a posthumous edition of Italian Pictures, the opinion might be that of the editors and not of Berenson); Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-­Nineteenth-­Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 122; Hendrik Westward. van Os and Marjan Rinkleff-­Reinders, "De reconstructie van Simone Martini's zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie,"Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 23 (1972): ix; "Simone Martini o di Martino," in Dizionario enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori eastward degli incisori italiani: Dall' Xi al 20 secolo, ed. Alberto Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi, 11 vols. (Turin, 1975), 10:325; Antonio Caleca, "Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, un'ipotesi sul Barna e la bottega di Simone e Lippo, 2,"Critica d'arte 42 (1977): 73; Dillian Gordon, "A Sienese verre eglomisé and Its Setting," The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981): 150; Svetlana Nikolaevna Vsevoložskaja, Ermitage: Italienische Malerei, 13. bis xviii. Jahrhundert, trans. North. Gerassimowa (Leningrad, 1982), 264; Boris Piotrovsky and Irene Linnik, Western European Painting in the Hermitage (Petrograd, 1984), no. 1; Colin T. Eisler, I dipinti dell'Ermitage (Udine, 1991), 163; "Martini, Simone," in Dizionario della pittura east dei pittori, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano, 6 vols. (Turin, 1992), 3:526; Tatiana K. Kustodieva, Italian Painting: Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, Catalogue of Western European Painting / The Hermitage (Florence, 1994), 265; Andrew Martindale, "Martini, Simone," in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), xx:509; Marco Pierini, "Martini, Simone," inEnciclopedia dell'arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), viii:250; Marco Pierini, Simone Martini (Cini­sello Balsamo, Milan, 2000) 206–208, 242 nn. 30, 32; Pierluigi Leone De Castris,Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332, 333; Michela Becchis, "Martini, Simone," in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 2008), 71:259; and of course the various Gallery catalogs.  fifty-fifty if many scholars preferred to speak of a product of the artist's shop or at any rate showed some uncertainty most its autograph condition. [9] [nine]
Giovanni Paccagnini, Simone Martini (Milan, 1955), 168–169; Enrico Castelnuovo, Un pittore ita­liano alla corte di Avignone: Matteo Giovannetti e la pittura in Provenza nel secolo XIV (Turin, 1962), 85–96; Wolfgang Kermer, Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (PhD diss., Eberhardt-­Karls-­Universität, Tübingen, 1967), two:xxx; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 244; Hendrik West. van Bone, Marias Demut und Verherr­lichung in der sienesischen Malerei: 1300–1450 (The Hague, 1969), 47 northward. 39; Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in L'opera completa di Simone Martini, by Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 106; Miklós Boskovits, "A Dismembered Polyptych, Lippo Vanni and Simone Martini," The Burlington Mag 116 (1974): 367 n. 9; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, "Unsettling Evidence in Some Panel Paintings of Simone Martini," in La pittura nel XIV due east Fifteen secolo, il contributo dell'analisi tecnica alla storia dell'arte, ed. Hendrik W. van Bone and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 216, 236; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Belatedly Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 118, 247, 261, 298, 324, 333, 355, 377, 388, 446, 464; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, "Problemi martiniani avignonesi: Il 'Maestro degli angeli ribelli,' i due Ceccarelli ed altro," in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 27–29, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 225–226; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), 130–131; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 60–61, 214–215; Piero Torriti, Simone Martini (Florence, 1991), 47; Ada Labriola, Simone Martini eastward la pittura gotica a Siena: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Memmo di Filippuccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ugolino di Nerio, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lippo Memmi, Matteo Giovanetti, Naddo Ceccarelli, Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccolò di ser Sozzo (Florence, 2008), 82.  Some even proposed culling names for its artist. [10] [10]
George Martin Richter (1941) proposed an attribution to Donato Martini, brother of Simone (a virtually unknown creative person, from whom no works have survived). Carlo Volpe (1955) wondered whether the painting, which he called a "documento mirabile," might not have been an early work by the immature Matteo Giovannetti, the painter who seems to have go the leading primary at the papal court in Avignon following Simone Martini's death. Subsequently, Cristina De Benedictis (1976, 1979) revived Richter's thesis and again attributed the Washington Archangel to Donato, the author, in her view, of works hitherto grouped under the conventional name of Main of the Straus Madonna; cf. Monica Leoncini, "Maestro della Madonna Straus – ​Donato Martini," in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento due east il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, ii vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:609–610. Enzo Carli (1981) and Grazia Neri (1997) accepted this proposal, and it was non excluded past Pierluigi Leone de Castris (1988, 1989), who in more contempo years (2003) seems indeed to have wholly embraced it. See George Martin Richter, "The New National Gallery in Washington," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177; Carlo Volpe, "United nations libro su Simone Martini, Review of Simone Martini by Giovanni Paccagnini," Paragone 6, no. 63 (1955): 52; Cristina De Benedictis, "Il Polittico della Passione di Simone Martini e una proposta per Donato," Antichità viva 15, no. 6 (1976): 5, eleven n. 20; Cristina De Benedictis, La pittura senese 1330–1370 (Florence, 1979), 29; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 125; Grazia Neri, "Maestro della Madonna Straus," in Enciclopedia dell'arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:101; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, "Problemi martiniani avignonesi: Il 'Maestro degli angeli ribelli,' i due Ceccarelli ed altro," in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 27–29, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 225 – ​226; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), 130–131; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332–333.

Rarely, however, has the trouble of the diptych at present divided between Petrograd and Washington been addressed in any systematic or analytic style. Art historians accept mainly limited themselves to brief and categorical statements, without advisedly weighing the show. In my view, information technology is precisely this superficial exam of the 2 panels, combined with the difficulties of evaluating them because of the marked abrasion A gradual loss of textile on the surface. It tin can be acquired past rubbing, wearing, or scraping against itself or some other material. It may be a deteriorative process that occurs over fourth dimension as a result of weathering or treatment or it may exist due to a deliberate attempt to polish the material. of their paint surfaces, which accounts for the uncertainties in their attribution and date.

Most all those who have cited the modest console in the Gallery and its companion, irrespective of their opinion regarding the attribution of the work, have agreed in assigning the two paintings to the years of Simone'south residence in Avignon. But its Avignonese origin has been asserted rather than proved, as if the profusion of gold, elaborate punched ornamental ornament, and refined elegance of poses were in themselves sufficient show that the ii paintings belonged to the final phase in the fine art of Simone Martini—that is, to the period of his maximum exposure to the tendencies of the transalpine Gothic Term used to denote, since the 15th century, the architecture and, from the 19th century onward, all the visual arts of Europe during a period extending by convention from about 1120 to c. 1400 in fundamental Italy, and until the late 15th century and even well into the 16th century in northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The early gothic mode overlapped chronologically with Romanesque and flourished subsequently the onset of Renaissance art in Italian republic and elsewhere. The term gothic is applied to western European painting of the 13th century to the early 15th century. Dissimilar gothic compages, it is distinguished more by developments in style and function than in technique, and even in these areas there is considerable national and regional diversity. The applicability of the term to Italian painting is debated, as is its usefulness in accounting for developments in Netherlandish painting from the early on 15th century. Contact with Byzantine art was close in the early 13th century, just after c. 1250 survived principally in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. —Peter Kidson, Grove Art © Oxford University Press in such a flourishing cultural middle as Avignon was at the time. Sometimes, however, pertinent observations apparently contradicting such an interpretation accept been fabricated. Fern Rusk Shapley (1966), for example, ended her comment on the Gallery's painting by declaring, "The style is, in any case, very close to that of Simone's Declaration of 1333, in the Uffizi"; and Andrew Martindale (1988), one of the few scholars to dedicate a thorough assay to the style and class of the panels that concern united states here, observed that the immensely elegant and elongated effigy of Mary had more than in common with the Virgin of the San Ansano altar (that is, the Annunciation in the Uffizi, Florence) than with that of the Holy Family (Christ Discovered in the Temple, dated 1342) in the Walker Fine art Gallery, Liverpool, and that "the images [of the Petrograd-­Washington diptych]​ . . . ​lack the robustness which spans the differences even between the Avignon frescoes, the Ambrosiana Virgil and the Liverpool Holy Family unit." [xi] [11]
Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–Xv Century (London, 1966), 48; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 214.  Some objective data should also be taken into account: for example, as Brigitte Klesse (1967) pointed out, the design of the brocaded robe of the affections in the panel in the Gallery recurs in that of the respective figure in the Uffizi Annunciation. [12] [12]
Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 244.  Also, the punches used in the diptych divided between Saint petersburg and Washington frequently recur in the Announcement now in Florence and in even earlier works, paintings that date to Simone's period in Orvieto, for example, but are seldom found in works that date to his Avignon period. [13] [13]
According to the important (though unfortunately not e'er sufficiently precise) repertoire of Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), the punches that decorate the panels of the Annunciation now divided between the Hermitage and the National Gallery of Fine art (namely, the motifs Frinta classified as "Da 10 a," "J 26 b," and "Jb 59") seldom recur in the Orsini quadriptych, a piece of work oftentimes assigned to the artist's final phase. On the other hand, the same punches used in the Annunciation appear with some frequency in works executed by Simone for Orvieto ("Da 10 a," "Fea nineteen," "Gh 8," "I 86 c," "I 129a," "J26 b," and "Jb 59") presumably during the 3rd decade; and often too in such paintings every bit the altarpiece of the Blessed Agostino Novello, now in the Pinacoteca in Siena, usually dated to the second half of the 1320s or after, or the Annunciation in the Uffizi, Florence, of 1333 ("Da 10 a," " Fea 19," "Gh viii," " I 86 c," "I 129 a," "J 26 b," and "Ka 30 b"). Erling Skaug, who at my request very kindly examined the punch marks of the Saint Petersburg - ​Washington diptych, wrote in a alphabetic character of September xvi, 2006, "Most probable the many punches in the diptych that were non used in the Orvieto polyptych means that the diptych is afterward—possibly only a little later," adding, "your suggestion of dating the diptych around 1330 seems just fine from the sphragiogical bespeak of view."

To these observations, which prompt a reconsideration of the usual dating of the diptych, nosotros tin add others that similarly suggest that the 2 panels are indeed earlier than usually claimed. Let the states get-go consider the Petrograd panel of the Virgin Annunciate. Of course, the elimination of the Virgin'south throne particularly would have been prompted by the need to press the figure of Mary, like the angel she confronts, into the foreground and bring her as shut equally possible to the spectator. But the swiveled pose of her trunk conspicuously echoes that of the Madonna of the Announcement in the Uffizi (apparently the model that other Sienese paintings, such equally the Virgin Advertise formerly in the Stoclet collection, imitate) [14] [14]
George Martin Richter, "Simone Martini Problems," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 54 (1929): 166–173, published the pocket-sized former Stoclet painting (25 × 17 cm), now in a private drove in the The states, as a work by Simone, but art historians generally rejected the proposal, restated in more recent years in the album Collection Adolphe Stoclet, vol. 1, Choix d'oeuvres appartenant à Madame Feron-­Stoclet: Préface de Georges A. Salles, . . . Avant-propos de Daisy Panthera leo-­Goldschmidt (Brussels, 1956), 86–88. In my view, the small-scale panel, rarely cited in monographs on Simone (although cf. Contini and Gozzoli 1970, where it is considered as belonging "alla cerchia di Simone in senso lato" [in the circumvolve of Simone in the broadest sense]), and sometimes referred to Naddo Ceccarelli (De Benedictis 1974), could exist a product of the shop of Andrea di Vanni (Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413); in any case, it suggests that Sienese artists were familiar with the Hermitage-­Gallery diptych. Meet Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli, L'opera completa di Simone Martini (Milan, 1970), 106; Cristina De Benedictis, "Naddo Ceccarelli," Commentari 25 (1974): 139–140.  and not that of the pocket-size panel in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. [15] [15]
The panel in question is ane of half dozen small-scale panels now divided among the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp (Angel of the Annunciation and The Descent from the Cross, originally on the back of the same panel; Virgin Annunciate and Crucifixion, originally on the back of the aforementioned panel); the Louvre, Paris (The Carrying of the Cross to Calvary); and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (The Entombment). They were components of a folding altarpiece that bore the signature of Simone and the coats of arms of the Orsini family; cf. Hendrik W. van Os and Marjan Rinkleff-­Reinders, "De reconstructie van Simone Martini'due south zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie," Neder­lands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 23 (1972): 13–26. Near scholars take considered this quadriptych a tardily work, executed c. 1335–1340, fifty-fifty though some have proposed a dating to the third decade or even earlier, such as Marco Pierini, Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2000), 206–208, 242 nn. xxx, 32, and others; run into Joseph Polzer, "Si­mone Martini's Orsini Folding Polyptych: Place of Origin and Date and Its Relation to the 1333 Uffizi Declaration, i," Arte cristiana 98, no. 860 (2010): 321–330; and Joseph Polzer, "Simone Martini's Orsini Folding Polyptych: Place of Origin and Date and Its Relation to the 1333 Uffizi Annunciation, two," Arte cristiana 98, no. 861 (2010): 401–408. Equally far as I am able to come across, however, stylistic evidence decisively contradicts this hypothesis.  The aforementioned may exist said of the motif of the book held half-open by Mary, her finger inserted between its pages as an improvised bookmark, and of the proportions of the Virgin herself. Her figure is characterized by the pronounced elongation of the bust and a smooth and placid contour formed of a succession of long, slightly crescent lines, advisedly avoiding whatsoever disturbing agitation of the hem of her dress. A restless jagged cadence, by dissimilarity, is a typical aspect of the panels now divided among the museums in Antwerp, Berlin, and Paris; of the illuminated frontispiece of the Virgil codex in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana; [16] [16]
The title page of ms. A 79 inf. in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan was deputed by Petrarch, equally attested by an shorthand annotation on the back, following the recovery in 1338 of the manuscript that had been stolen from him. Cf. Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen 1300–1450, 8 vols. (Berlin, 1980–1990), 2, pt. ii:319–331; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 364.  and of Christ Discovered in the Temple, a panel signed and dated 1342, in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. [17] [17]
No. 2787. Cf. Julian Gardner, "The Dorsum of the Panel of Christ Discovered in the Temple by Simone Martini," Arte cristiana 78 (1990): 389–398; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 364–365.

Rather like observations tin exist made about the Washington panel of the archangel Gabriel. In particular, the emphasis placed on the magnificent gold embroidered robe, as on the proud pose of the heavenly messenger, kneeling only only slightly angle forward equally he proffers the olive branch with the tips of his fingers to the Virgin, underlines the resemblance of the image to its counterpart in the Uffizi. The face, with its mysterious expression accentuated by delicate slit eyes that create the impression that the archangel is looking furtively and yet probingly at Mary, and with his firmly clenched lips, may think the face of the kid Jesus in the Liverpool console; however, the fluid cadence of the draperies, their large and sweeping folds animated only past the fluttering hem, seem to me to betray rather different intentions than those that inspired the artist during his menstruum in Avignon. In the Angel of the Annunciation in Antwerp, for example, the artist no longer seeks to dazzle the spectator with the glitter of the exotic oriental silk brocade worn by Gabriel but prefers instead to play with the matching of delicate tones of pinkish and pale purple, highlighting the mantle with the archaic medium of chrysography, which articulates the folds and underlines the forms more distinctly than the transparent lacquers painted on gold. These aspects, together with the boggling elegance of the cartoon, seem to me to confirm that the Gallery panel and its companion panel in St. Petersburg (which, as far as information technology is possible to judge from their existing land, were painted by the aforementioned hand) [18] [18]
On the occasion of the opening of the National Gallery of Art, Richard Offner expressed a withering judgment of the painting in a review he wrote for Fine art News, but the mag preferred non to publish it (copy of the proofs in NGA curatorial files). Offner described "a superannuated pigment streaked over the outlines​ . . . ​[which] disfigures the fourteenth century original. The remaining surface seems to have been subjected to successive abrasions. . . . Hence, partly through modern additions, partly considering they never were at that place, the shapes and the rhythms of Simone are nowhere in prove." Of course, these lines reflect the console's country in 1941, and we don't know what Offner idea subsequently its cleaning in 1955 or whether his reservations nearly the Angel of the Annunciation likewise applied to the Virgin Annunciate in the Hermitage. Some art historians in more recent years take tried to identify stylistic differences between these two panels, such equally Maria Cristina Gozzoli in L'opera completa di Simone Martini, by Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 106, who placed the Russian console in Simone's itemize but believed the Washington panel a workshop product, detecting in it "un notevole scarto di qualità rispetto alle opere certe di Simone​ . . . ​tale da far pensare a un'esecuzione integralmente di bottega" (a notable drop in quality with respect to the certain works of Simone, sufficient to advise its complete execution by the workshop). Subsequently, however, information technology seems that no other author has been able to identify—and the nowadays author incomparably rejects—whatever such disparity in quality between the two leaves of the diptych. Moreover, recent attempts to discriminate between autograph and workshop parts of the execution are butterfingers from the start by the heavily abraded state of the surface of both panels. Cf. Grazia Neri, "Maestro della Madonna Straus," in Enciclopedia dell'arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), viii:101; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332–333, 365. Such a discrimination or sectionalisation of easily is in whatsoever case implausible in the instance of these small paintings for private devotion, which, to judge from their sumptuous execution—lavish in gilded leafage—must take been destined for high-ranking patrons.  belong to the catalog of Simone'south autograph works, though to a phase preceding his journey to Avignon. That stage can be placed between the works executed in the early on 1320s for Orvieto and the dated Uffizi Annunciation of 1333.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

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Source: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.357.html

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