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On a tiled courtyard between buildings with arches and columns, a winged angel kneels and looks up at a woman standing to our right in this vertical painting. Both people have pale skin, blond hair, and plate-like gold halos at the back of their heads. To our left, the angel wears a silvery-white tunic under a scarlet-red cloak lined with cobalt blue. The wings are fawn brown on the underside, closer to the body, and aquamarine blue on the outside. Gold lines delineate feathers. The angel holds a white lily with two blooms and four buds on a long stem in the hand farther from us, which rests on a bent knee. The other hand is raised in front of the chest. The woman, Mary, stands along the right edge of the painting, her body angled toward the angel. Mary’s long, wavy hair falls to her shoulders, and she wears a lapis-blue robe with a pine-green lining over a red dress. She holds her right hand, farther from us, to her chest and touches the fabric of her cloak with the other, by her hip. The tip of one red shoe peeks out under her voluminous robe. Between the angel and Mary is a stone-white urn with scrolled handles, holding a bouquet of pink and white roses with dark green foliage. The ground is tiled with squares marbled in pale pink, sky blue, rust red, charcoal gray, and brown. Narrow, white panels between the tiles create a grid. The buildings around the pair are fog gray, parchment white, shell pink, or coral red, and are trimmed in black, red, or pink. Rows of arches recede into the square behind the angel and woman, ending at a coral-red wall that encloses the courtyard. An arched doorway in that wall opens onto a pathway leading over a small brook and into a hilly forest. A narrow, conical tree outside the courtyard reaches over the wall, into the vibrant blue sky above. A white dove descends from among the few scattered clouds with golden beams projecting toward the woman to our right.

Fra Carnevale

The Annunciation, c. 1445/1450

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 4

Medium

tempera on panel

Dimensions

overall: 87.6 x 62.8 cm (34 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.)

framed: 120 x 92.4 x 8.3 cm (47 1/4 x 36 3/8 x 3 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.218

Artists / Makers

Fra Carnevale (painter) Marchigian, active c. 1445 - 1484

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Provenance

Prince Ferdinando Lorenzo Strozzi [1821-1878], Florence, by 1857/1858.[1] Louis-Charles Timbal [1821-1880], Paris;[2] sold 1872 with his collection to Gustave Dreyfus [1837-1914], Paris; his heirs; sold 1930 with the entire Dreyfus collection to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York);[3] sold May 1936 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] The painting was seen there by Cavalcaselle probably during his stay in Florence in 1857-1858 (see Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II to the XVI Century, 3 vols., London, 1864-1866: 1(1864):348; and Donata Levi, Cavalcaselle. Il pioniere della conservazione dell'arte italiana, Turin, 1988: 122-132). Otto Mündler saw the painting at the Palazzo Strozzi in April 1958; see The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler 1855-1858, ed. Carol Togneri Dowd, Walpole Society 51 (1985): 220, 291. Facing economic difficulties in the late 1870s, the family sold the most valuable pieces in the gallery after the death of Prince Ferdinando Lorenzo (see Beatric Paolozzi Strozzi, "Ferdinando Strozzi. Appunti di storia ottocentesca," in Palazzo Strozzi, metà millennio: 1489-1989, Atti del convegno di studi, Firenze, 3-6 luglio 1989, Rome, 1991: 59, and Wilhelm von Bode, Mein Leben, ed. Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Barbara Paul, 2 vols., Berlin, 1997 [original ed. 1930]: 1:131); NGA 1939.1.218, however, must have been sold during his lifetime. Unfortunately, as Dr. Cristina Gelli informed Miklòs Boskovits, the inventory of the Strozzi collection compiled in 1815 by the notary Domenico Del Podestà and deposited at the Archivio di Stato in Florence is now lost.

[2] The painter and collector Timbal must have acquired the painting sometime before 1872 when, during the siege of Paris, he decided to sell his entire collection to Gustave Dreyfus; see Musées Nationaux. Catalogue de la Collection Timbal, Paris, 1882: 5, and Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 187.

[3] See Fowles 1976: 187, and Dora Landau, "Notes from Abroad," International Studio 96 (August 1930): 65.

[4] The Duveen Brothers letter confirming the sale of thirteen paintings and one sculpture, including "an oil painting representing 'The Annunciation' by Francesco Pesellino...Attributed by Mr. Bernhard Berenson to 'The Carrand Master'," is dated 18 May 1936; the provenance is given as "Dreyfus Colln." (copy in NGA curatorial files; Box 474 Folder 5, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2060.

Associated Names

Dreyfus, Gustave
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Strozzi, Ferdinando Lorenzo, Prince
Timbal, Louis-Charles

Exhibition History

1991: Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991-1992, not in cat.

1992: Piero e Urbino, Piero e le Corti rinascimentali, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 1992, no. 61, repro.

1994: The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, Palazzo Grassi, Venice; NGA, Washington, D.C.; Musée des Monuments Français, Paris; Altes Mus., Berlin, 1994-1996, no. 422 of cat. supplement (shown only in Paris).

2004: From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnavale and the Making of a Renaissance Master, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004-2005, no. 40, repro.

2005: Il Rinascimento a Urbino. Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico [The Renaissance in Urbino: Fra Carnevale and the artists of the Palazzo Federico], Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, 2005-2006, no. 29, repro.

2006: Loan for display with permanent collection, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, 2006.

2006: L'Uomo del Rinascimento: Leon Battista Alberti e le arti a Firenze tra ragione e bellezza, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, March-July 2006, no. 159, repro.

2011: Arquitecturas pintadas: del Renacimiento al siglo XVIII, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2011-2012, no. 11, repro.

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