Annunciation

Former TitleThe Annunciation

Attributed to Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, ca. 1350 - 1396)

Formerly attributed to Master of the Straus Madonna (Italian (Florentine), active late 14th century - early 15th century)

Formerly attributed toWorkshop of Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, ca. 1350 - 1396)

Dateca. 1380-1390

MediumTempera on panel

DimensionsOverall: 51 1/4 × 27 1/4 × 3 1/2 inches (130.18 × 69.22 × 8.89 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number35-25

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionTriangular-topped panel with gold ground, tooled at top and left edges and in halos. Kneeling archangel in left foreground wears pink and yellow garments with a red sash; his hand's are clasped to his breast. The Virgin is seated inside the anteroom of a crenelated gray building with a mosaic floor. She sits in a chair in the right foreground in front of a lectern and wears dark blue and tooled-gold garments; her hands are raised in front of her. In the background is an open bed chamber with red and white draperies; a dove hovers over the bed. At the upper left, a figure representing God the Father hovers outside the building.
Exhibition History

Exhibition History

No known exhibition history at this time.

Provenance

Possibly with G. Grassi, Florence [1];

With Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), Florence, by 1922;

Purchased from Bardini by Fritz Lugt (1884-1970), Paris, by 1922-1935 [2];

Purchased from Lugt, through Robert Langton Douglas, London, and Jacques Seligmann and Co., New York, stock no. 5865, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1935. [3]

NOTES:

[1] An annotation by Bernard Berenson on the reverse of a photograph in the Fototeca Berenson, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence reads: G. Grassi/March 22, 1929. Since Grassi’s ownership precedes this date, this may be the date Berenson wrote the inscription.

[2] According to Robert Langton Douglas, in a letter to Harold Woodbury Parsons, European Art Advisor, April 27, 1935, NAMA curatorial files.

[3] Robert Langton Douglas records, stock book A, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, European Paintings Department. Lugt consigned the painting to Douglas by December 21, 1934, the date Douglas shipped the painting to Jacques Seligmann and Co. Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., Jacques Seligmann and Co. Records, box 299, folder 8, Consular Invoices 1934, copy in NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: il Quattrocento fiorentino, II,” Dedalo 12 (1932): 1314-1318, (repro.) [repr. in Hanna Kiel, ed., Homeless paintings of the Renaissance (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), 126-128, (repro.)], as by Giovanni Di Bartolomeo Cristiani.

“Gherardo Starnino: Annunciation,” American Magazine of Art 28, no. 7 (July 1935): 388, (repro.), as by Gherardo Starnino.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 24, 27, 169, (repro.), as by Agnolo Gaddi.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of fine Arts, 1959), 262, as by workshop of Agnolo Gaddi.

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, 1963), 51, as by Giovanni di Bartolommeo Cristiani.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of pre-nineteenth-century Italian paintings in North American public collections (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 76, 302, 589, as by Agnolo Gaddi.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. Mckenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 260, as by Agnolo Gaddi.

Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-1400 (Florence: Edam, 1975), 244n210, as by Master of the Accademia Carrara Saints.

Dizionario Biografico Degli Italiani, vol. 31 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1985), 16, as by Giovanni Cristiani.

Francesco Rossi and Federico Zeri, La Raccolta Morelli Nell’Accademia Carrara (Bergamo: Credito Bergamasco, 1986), 68, as by Master of the Accademia Carrara Saints.

Elliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings, 1300-1800 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 59-64, (repro.), as by workshop of Agnolo Gaddi.

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