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Premium Central European school. Possibly Germany. 16th-17th century…
Central European school. Possibly Germany. 16th-17th century…
Lot no. 21
Description
Central European school. Possibly Germany. 16th-17th century.
'Annunciation'
Grisaille on panel. Cradled.
154 x 75,5 cm.
We are looking at an important example of grisaille painting. And we may ask ourselves: why was it painted in grisaille? Perhaps for ascetic reasons, out of personal taste, religious motives associated with the sober colors of Lent, or simply artistic ones. It could also have been a demonstration of skill, painting as if one were sculpting.
Contemplating this work is to close one’s eyes and compare it—without a shadow of doubt—with the jewel of grisaille paintings that can be seen at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum: Jan Van Eyck’s diptych, in which the artist intentionally renounces the use of any primary color and conceives the image through the application of white and black, creating the illusion of a sculptural group. That piece is a small-format work that may have been intended for private devotion. The one in this auction, of large dimensions, would have been part of a series on the life of Mary in an altarpiece, the possible doors of a sacristy cabinet, or one of the panels of doors leading into a religious space.
This Annunciation represents the theme taken from the Gospel of Saint Luke 1:26–38, a scene that also appears in the apocryphal gospels and in the Qur’an. It is conceived as a diptych within a single painting: two niches containing two figures that are both separate and united, with only a false wall pilaster dividing and connecting them at once.
On the left stands the Archangel Gabriel, addressing his greeting to Mary: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” And on Mary’s scroll, on the right, we read: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
Two figures are framed within an architecture where the artist imitates a variety of materials, reproducing stone (sculptures) and inscriptions integrated into the scrolls as if they were carved. An Annunciation painted—like Van Eyck’s—as a sculptural ensemble: two figures isolated in finely cut niches in a wall, two characters wrapped in generous cloaks whose fabrics fall in hard folds resting on the ground, and two figures that seem to emerge from those niches and extend outward, like the right wing of the Archangel, which protrudes and projects forward, reinforcing its volume with the strong shadow it casts within the niche.
The artist creates a trompe-l’oeil and an optical illusion—the impression of being in front of a sculptural group—a pictorial technique that, through a false perspective, reveals the painter’s skill in making us believe what is not real. The delicate chiaroscuro, achieved by making various gradations of a single color, generally gray and sandy cream or dirty yellow, seeks a tone as close as possible to that of stone.
The arrangement of the figures and their hands, what they hold (a scepter, a book of hours, or the lily that separates them), also strongly recalls the 'Friedsam Annunciation', a painting by the Flemish artist Petrus Christus, executed in oil on oak panel around 1450 and displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In our painting, the dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, does not appear—unlike in the compared works. The lily, however, is present; it primarily symbolizes Mary’s purity and virginity. It also represents the mystery of the Incarnation, the purity of faith rising straight toward God, and the new life that will spring forth and be born in Mary, symbolizing the salvation and spiritual rebirth brought by the birth of Jesus. The lily is, therefore, a key element in the iconography representing the celestial message of the Archangel Gabriel.
Provenance:
- Private collection. Mallorca.
Pictures credits:
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