The Angel of the Annunciation
Simone Martinic. 1330
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
This small, rich panel was originally the left side of a diptych, which, along with a right-hand panel depicting the Virgin Mary (now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg), depicts one image of the Annunciation—the moment when the archangel Gabriel brings Mary the news that she will give birth to the Son of God.
The picture in the collection of the National Gallery of Art is marked by Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) characteristic refinement and elegance in the elongated, delicate figure of the angel, and the sumptuously decorated and patterned surfaces throughout. The curve of Gabriel’s wing frames his kneeling figure and echoes the curves in his halo and palm branch. Simone devised new ways to recreate the look of luxurious brocaded fabrics. After covering the panel with a layer of red clay, he gilded the entire surface (except for the hands and face). He next painted the angel's robe in delicate pinks, shadowed with darker tones to define folds and the body. Following the brocade pattern, he scraped away areas of paint to reveal the gilding below, which was then textured with tiny punches. This _sgrafitto_ ("scratched") technique may have been inspired by Islamic ceramics decorated in a similar fashion and widely popular in Italy.
A few years later, Simone brought both figures together again in an Annunciation that is the subject of a single splendid altarpiece originally for the Siena cathedral (now in the Uffizi, Florence). Details of execution link the two works: the same punches were used to decorate the gold and the same technique was applied to Gabriel’s robe. The Annunciation had been represented on large altarpieces by small busts of Mary and the angel set in the background (see, for example, The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation), but Simone seems to have been the first to make it the primary focus of a major work.
- Title: The Angel of the Annunciation
- Creator: Simone Martini
- Date Created: c. 1330
- Physical Dimensions: painted surface (on recto): 29.5 x 20.5 cm (11 5/8 x 8 1/16 in.) overall: 31 x 21.5 cm (12 3/16 x 8 7/16 in.) painted surface (gesso ground on verso): 21 x 30.2 cm (8 1/4 x 11 7/8 in.) framed: 54.6 x 32.9 x 4.1 cm (21 1/2 x 12 15/16 x 1 5/8 in.)
- Provenance: Charles John Canning, 2nd Viscount Canning and later 1st Earl Canning [1812-1862]; by bequest to his sister, Harriet Canning de Burgh [1804-1876], Marchioness of Clanricarde; by inheritance to her daughter, Margaret Anne de Burgh Beaumont [1831-1888]; probably by inheritance to her son, Wentworth Canning Blackett Beaumont, 1st Viscount Allendale [1860-1923];[1] said to have been in the collection of Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th earl of Harewood [1882-1947], Harewood House, Leeds, Yorkshire;[2] Lionello Venturi [1895-1961], New York;[3] sold 1936 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] The back of the painting bears a paper label printed with a coat of arms with three Moors’ heads in profile and the coronet of a viscount above. Underneath is painted the name CANNING. As Ellis Waterhouse’s note of 1980 (in NGA curatorial files) informed the Gallery, this can only refer to Charles John Canning; on Canning see also Bernard Burke, _A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire_, 24th ed., London, 1862: 171. The paper label also is inscribed with the handwritten name of Lady Margaret Beaumont and the number 32. According to Waterhouse’s note, this can only be Margaret Anne de Burgh, daughter of Ulick John de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, and of Harriet Canning, sister and heir of Charles John Canning. Margaret Anne married Wentworth Blackett Beaumont (1829-1907) in 1856. The painting probably was inherited by their son, Wentworth Canning Blackett Beaumont. [2] Lascelles is named in Lionello Venturi’s February 1936 letter to the restorer Stephen Pichetto (copy in NGA curatorial files) as the person from whom “about two years ago,” i.e., in c. 1934, the painting was acquired by the unnamed person (Venturi) who owned it in February 1936. Lascelles was a grandson of Lady Elizabeth Joanna de Burgh (a sister of Margaret Anne de Burgh Beaumont), who had married Henry Thynne Lascelles, 4th earl Harewood, who became the heir of Elizabeth’s and Margaret’s unmarried brother, Herbert George de Burgh-Canning, 2nd (and last) marquess of Clanricarde. However, according to Ellis Waterhouse (see note 1) the Washington panel “didn’t belong ever to the Earl of Harewood (it was one of the few Clanricarde pictures which didn’t).” Indeed, the panel is not included in Tancred Borenius’ catalogue of the Harewood collection; the introduction indicates that the 2nd marquess of Clanricarde bequeathed to Lascelles mainly pictures by English eighteenth-century masters; see Tancred Borenius, _Catalogue of the pictures and drawings at Harewood House and elswhere in the collection of the Earl of Harewood_, Oxford, 1936: vii. [3] Fern Rusk Shapley (_Catalogue of the Italian Paintings_, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:431) states that Venturi sold the panel to Samuel H. Kress in 1936. [4] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2058.
- Medium: tempera on poplar panel
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