The Angel of the Annunciation, c. 1330

The painting represents the archangel Gabriel, who announces the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary.[1]  [1]
Luke 1:26–38. For the iconography of the scene, cf. David M. Robb, “The Iconography of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 480–526; Giacomo Prampolini, L’annunciazione nei pittori primitivi italiani (Milan, 1939); and the more recent studies by Julia Liebrich, Die Verkündigung an Maria: Die Ikonographie der italienischen Darstellungen von den Anfängen bis 1500 (Cologne, 1997); and Daniel Arasse, L’Annonciation italienne: Une histoire de perspective (Paris, 1999). Marco Pie­rini’s comment (2000) describing the archangel’s mode of presenting himself to the Virgin, with his left hand 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 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 separate panel, which in fact has always been recognized in the Virgin Annunciate now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Simone Martini, Virgin of the Annunciation, c. 1330, tempera on panel, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. © The State 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 collection of Count Gregory Stroganoff (1829–1910) and entered the Hermitage after the collector’s death.[2]  [2]
No. GE 284; 30.5 × 21.5 cm.  The two halves of the diptych probably were separated in the nineteenth century, given that the very similar state of conservation of the two panels suggests a similar fate: the paint surface of both was ruined by 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,[3]  [3]
Giovanni Bernardini (1901) wrote that the small panel was “forse da attribuire al grande artista senese” (perhaps to be attributed to the great Sienese artist), presumably echoing Stroganoff’s own attribution. Giovanni Bernardini, “Alcuni di­pinti della collezione del conte Stroganoff in Roma,” Rassegna d’arte 1 (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. See F. Mason Perkins, “La pittura alla mostra d’arte antica a Siena,” Rassegna d’arte 4 (1904): 146; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. 5, La pittura del Trecento e le sue origini (Milan, 1907), 629; Robert Langton Douglas, in A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian Schools, by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle (London, 1908), 69 n. 2; 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 almost unanimously [4]  [4]
George Martin Richter (1929) at first proposed the name of Paolo di Giovanni Fei for the panel now in St. Petersburg but later changed his mind (1941), attributing the painting instead to a “close follower” of Simone, perhaps to be identified with Donato Martini. Thereafter the two 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 master after its display at Mostra dell’antica arte senese in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in 1904. Lionello Venturi then identified the image of the Angel of the Annunciation as the companion panel of the former Stroganoff Virgin Annunciate in 1935.[5]  [5]
Manuscript expertise dated July 2, 1935 (copy in NGA curatorial files).  Venturi’s 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) also accepted the attribution to Simone Martini, citing a written expertise by Roberto Longhi, who confirmed Simone’s authorship, and the opinion of Bernard BerensonBerenson, Bernard
 (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) 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 feel myself weakest. One can study literature here . . . but art not 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 Italy and to devote his life to the study of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, who rejected the attribution.[7]  [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,[8]  [8]
Michel Laclotte, De Giotto à Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les musées de France (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 n. 10; François Enaud, “Les fresques de Simone Martini à Avignon,” Les monuments historiques de la France 9 (1963): 163, 177 n. 161; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century (London, 1966), 48; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2:405 (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 W. van Os and Marjan Rinkleff-­Reinders, “De reconstructie van Simone Martini’s zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie,” Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 23 (1972): 9; “Simone Martini o di Martino,” in Dizionario enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli incisori italiani: Dall’ XI al XX 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 18. Jahrhundert, trans. N. Gerassimowa (Leningrad, 1982), 264; Boris Piotrovsky and Irene Linnik, Western European Painting in the Hermitage (Leningrad, 1984), no. 1; Colin T. Eisler, I dipinti dell’Ermitage (Udine, 1991), 163; “Martini, Simone,” in Dizionario della pittura e 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), 20:509; Marco Pierini, “Martini, Simone,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:250; 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.  even if many scholars preferred to speak of a product of the artist’s shop or at any rate showed some uncertainty about its autograph status.[9]  [9]
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), 2:30; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 244; Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und Verherr­lichung in der sienesischen Malerei: 1300–1450 (The Hague, 1969), 47 n. 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 Magazine 116 (1974): 367 n. 9; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, “Unsettling Evidence in Some Panel Paintings of Simone Martini,” in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Hendrik W. van Os and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 216, 236; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late 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 e 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 alternative names for its artist.[10]  [10]
George Martin Richter (1941) proposed an attribution to Donato Martini, brother of Simone (a virtually unknown artist, 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 young Matteo Giovannetti, the painter who seems to have become the leading master at the papal court in Avignon following Simone Martini’s death. Subsequently, Cristina De Benedictis (1976, 1979) revived Richter’s thesis and once again attributed the Washington Archangel to Donato, the author, in her view, of works hitherto grouped under the conventional name of Master of the Straus Madonna; cf. Monica Leoncini, “Maestro della Madonna Straus – ​Donato Martini,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:609–610. Enzo Carli (1981) and Grazia Neri (1997) accepted this proposal, and it was not excluded by Pierluigi Leone de Castris (1988, 1989), who in more recent 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, “Un 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, 11 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 problem of the diptych now divided between St. Petersburg and Washington been addressed in any systematic or analytic fashion. Art historians have mainly limited themselves to brief and categorical statements, without carefully weighing the evidence. In my view, it is precisely this superficial examination of the two panels, combined with the difficulties of evaluating them because of the marked abrasionAbrasion
 A gradual loss of material on the surface. It can be caused by rubbing, wearing, or scraping against itself or another material. It may be a deteriorative process that occurs over time as a result of weathering or handling or it may be due to a deliberate attempt to smooth the material. of their paint surfaces, which accounts for the uncertainties in their attribution and date. 

Almost all those who have cited the small panel 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’s residence in Avignon. But its Avignonese origin has been asserted rather than proved, as if the profusion of gold, elaborate punched ornamental decoration, and refined elegance of poses were in themselves sufficient evidence that the two paintings belonged to the final phase in the art of Simone Martini—that is, to the period of his maximum exposure to the tendencies of the transalpine GothicGothic
 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 central Italy, and until the late 15th century and even well into the 16th century in northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The early gothic style overlapped chronologically with Romanesque and flourished after the onset of Renaissance art in Italy and elsewhere. The term gothic is applied to western European painting of the 13th century to the early 15th century. Unlike gothic architecture, 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 15th century. Contact with Byzantine art was close in the early 13th century, but after c. 1250 survived principally in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. —Peter Kidson, Grove Art © Oxford University Press in such a flourishing cultural center as Avignon was at the time. Sometimes, however, pertinent observations apparently contradicting such an interpretation have been made. Fern Rusk Shapley (1966), for example, concluded her comment on the Gallery's painting by declaring, “The style is, in any case, very close to that of Simone’s Annunciation of 1333, in the Uffizi”; and Andrew Martindale (1988), one of the few scholars to dedicate a thorough analysis to the style and form of the panels that concern us here, observed that the immensely elegant and elongated figure of Mary had more 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 Art Gallery, Liverpool, and that “the images [of the St. Petersburg-­Washington diptych]​ . . . ​lack the robustness which spans the differences even between the Avignon frescoes, the Ambrosiana Virgil and the Liverpool Holy Family.”[11]  [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 pattern of the brocaded robe of the angel in the panel in the Gallery recurs in that of the corresponding 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 St. Petersburg and Washington frequently recur in the Annunciation 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 always 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 Art (namely, the motifs Frinta classified as “Da 10 a,” “J 26 b,” and “Jb 59”) seldom recur in the Orsini quadriptych, a work often 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 19,” “Gh 8,” “I 86 c,” “I 129a,” “J26 b,” and “Jb 59”) presumably during the third decade; and often also in such paintings as 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 8,” “ 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 letter of September 16, 2006, “Most likely the many punches in the diptych that were not used in the Orvieto polyptych means that the diptych is later—perhaps only a little later,” adding, “your suggestion of dating the diptych around 1330 seems just fine from the sphragiogical point of view.”

To these observations, which prompt a reconsideration of the usual dating of the diptych, we can add others that similarly suggest that the two panels are indeed earlier than usually claimed. Let us first consider the St. Petersburg panel of the Virgin Annunciate. Of course, the elimination of the Virgin’s throne especially 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 close as possible to the spectator. But the swiveled pose of her body clearly echoes that of the Madonna of the Annunciation in the Uffizi (apparently the model that other Sienese paintings, such as the Virgin Annunciate 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 small former Stoclet painting (25 × 17 cm), now in a private collection in the United 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 Lion-­Goldschmidt (Brussels, 1956), 86–88. In my view, the small 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 circle of Simone in the broadest sense]), and sometimes referred to Naddo Ceccarelli (De Benedictis 1974), could be 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. See 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 small panel in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp.[15]  [15]
The panel in question is one of six small 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 same 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’s zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie,” Neder­lands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 23 (1972): 13–26. Most scholars have considered this quadriptych a late work, executed c. 1335–1340, even 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. 30, 32, and others; see Joseph Polzer, “Si­mone Martini’s Orsini Folding Polyptych: Place of Origin and Date and Its Relation to the 1333 Uffizi Annunciation, 1,” 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, 2,” Arte cristiana 98, no. 861 (2010): 401–408. As far as I am able to see, however, stylistic evidence decisively contradicts this hypothesis.  The same may be 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, carefully avoiding any disturbing agitation of the hem of her dress. A restless jagged cadence, by contrast, 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 commissioned by Petrarch, as attested by an autograph note 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. 2:319–331; 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 Back 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 similar observations can be 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 but only slightly bending forward as 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 recall the face of the child Jesus in the Liverpool panel; however, the fluid cadence of the draperies, their large and sweeping folds animated only by the fluttering hem, seem to me to betray rather different intentions than those that inspired the artist during his period 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 pink 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 extraordinary elegance of the drawing, seem to me to confirm that the Gallery panel and its companion panel in St. Petersburg (which, as far as it is possible to judge from their existing state, were painted by the same 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 Art News, but the magazine preferred not 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 because they never were there, the shapes and the rhythms of Simone are nowhere in evidence.” Of course, these lines reflect the panel’s state in 1941, and we don’t know what Offner thought after its cleaning in 1955 or whether his reservations about the Angel of the Annunciation also applied to the Virgin Annunciate in the Hermitage. Some art historians in more recent years have tried to identify stylistic differences between these two panels, such as Maria Cristina Gozzoli in L’opera completa di Simone Martini, by Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 106, who placed the Russian panel in Simone’s catalog 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 suggest its complete execution by the workshop). Subsequently, however, it seems that no other author has been able to identify—and the present writer decidedly rejects—any 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 disqualified 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), 8:101; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332–333, 365. Such a discrimination or division of hands is in any case implausible in the case of these small paintings for private devotion, which, to judge from their sumptuous execution—lavish in gold leaf—must have been destined for high-ranking patrons.  belong to the catalog of Simone’s autograph works, though to a phase preceding his journey to Avignon. That phase can be placed between the works executed in the early 1320s for Orvieto and the dated Uffizi Annunciation of 1333.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016