Annunciation
The Christmas Story: 15th-20th-Century Prints, Yellowstone Art Center, Billings, MT, November 2-December 30, 1979, no. cat.
The Archangel Gabriel humbly interrupts the Virgin’s prayers to announce that she will bear the Son of God. Billowing clouds, formed by a web of graceful swelling lines, invade the domestic space. Their presence signals the arrival of the divine in the form of the Holy Spirit. This scene belongs to a series of six prints designed and engraved by Hendrick Goltzius. Each print mimics the signature styles of other artists, demonstrating the Dutch artist’s technical versatility. Here, Goltzius consulted a reproduction of an Italian painting, but the precise source remains unknown.
Collection D’Arenberg, Brussels [1];
With Alden Galleries, Kansas City, MO, by July 19, 1933;
Purchased from Alden Galleries by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.
NOTES:
[1] The Arenberg collection's mark appears on the verso of the print, lower left-hand side. Frits Lugt, Les Marques de collections de dessins & d'estampes, online edition by the Fondation Custodia, no. L.567.
Roger Ward, ed., A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977-1987, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1987), 240.
George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 274-75.
