Annunciation (Christus): Difference between revisions

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* [[Erwin Panofsky|Panofsky, Erwin]]. ”[[Early Netherlandish Painting (Panofsky book)|Early Netherlandish Painting]]”. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1953

* [[Erwin Panofsky|Panofsky, Erwin]]. ”[[Early Netherlandish Painting (Panofsky book)|Early Netherlandish Painting]]”. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1953

* Panofsky, Erwin. “The Friedsam Annunciation and the Problem of the Ghent Altarpiece”. ”The Art Bulletin”, volume 17, number 4, December 1935. {{jstor|3045596}}

* Panofsky, Erwin. “The Friedsam Annunciation and the Problem of the Ghent Altarpiece”. ”The Art Bulletin”, volume 17, number 4, December 1935. {{jstor|3045596}}

* Sperling, Della Clason. In: “[https://www.metmuseum.org/met-publications/from-van-eyck-to-bruegel-early-netherlandish-painting-in-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art]”. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. {{isbn|0-8709-9870-6}}

*Robb, David. “The Iconography of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”. ”The Art Bulletin”, volume 18, number 4, December 1936. {{jstor|3045651}}

*Robb, David. “The Iconography of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”. ”The Art Bulletin”, volume 18, number 4, December 1936. {{jstor|3045651}}

* [[John Russell (art critic)|Russell, John]]. “The Iconography of the Friedsam Annunciation”. ”The Art Bulletin”, volume 60, number 1, March 1978, pp. 24–27. {{jstor|3049740}}

* [[John Russell (art critic)|Russell, John]]. “The Iconography of the Friedsam Annunciation”. ”The Art Bulletin”, volume 60, number 1, March 1978, pp. 24–27. {{jstor|3049740}}

Painting by Petrus Christus

The Annunciation (commonly the Friedsam Annunciation)^[2] is a c. 1445 oil-on-oak panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Petrus Christus (d. 1476). It shows the biblical annunciation, marking the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she will conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth and become the mother of Jesus Christ.

The panel contains a number of perspective and spatial anomalies that make it especially complex. The viewer has a bird’s eye view, the framing is slightly left-of-centre, while the lack of a view of a horizon indicates that it was somewhat unskilfully cut down on three sides from a larger painting: art historians generally assume that it is a remnant of the left-hand wing of a triptych altarpiece.

The panel was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1931 by the businessman and art collector Michael Friedsam.

Description

The scene depicts the biblical annunciation according to the Gospel of Luke, marking the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she will conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth and become the mother of Jesus Christ. The church is situated within a semi-enclosed and somewhat neglected garden containing mostly wild flowers.^[3]

Figures

Mary stands in a slightly elevated niche outside a church door. This exterior setting is unusual, given that the majority of contemporary depictions of the annunciation are set in either domestic settings or church interiors. She wears a blue robe and reads from a small book of hours. She is dressed in blue and holding a small prayerbook, most likely an illuminated book of hours.^[4] The vase of white lilies on the bench to her right symbolise her purity.^[5]

According to the art historian Maryan Ainsworth, the doorway represents a “porta coeli, or spiritual gateway
to heaven”.^[6] The floor of the niche contains multicoloured tiles decorated with geometric and floral patterns. The church steps are lined by the words “REGINA CELI LET[ARE]” (“Queen of Heaven, Rejoice”), which are painted but presented as if inscriptions. On either side of this phrase are the letters “A” & “M”, representing the words Ave Maria,” the traditional greeting to Mary from Gabriel.^[5]

To her left and before her, Gabriel kneels in what appears to be an enclosed garden, a common motif to symbolise chastity. Gabriel holds a scepter and has brightly coloured wings. He wears red and white liturgical vestments embroidered with gold and fastened by a brooch.^[7]

Architecture and garden

The architecture of the church is complex and contains features of the Romanesque on the right and Gothic on the left. Art historians interpret the building as marking the changes brought by the transition from the Old to the New Testaments,^[1] and from Judaism to Christianity. The Gothic half is more visible and has windows, a symbol of divine light. The two Gothic buttress are wider and more elaborate and capped by decorative figures described in Flemish as “Kruisbloeme” (flower of the cross).^[5]

The painting gives the viewer a bird’s-eye view. Given that the framing is slightly left-of-centre and there is no view of the horizon, art historians assume that it was cut down on three sides from a larger painting: most likely the panel is a remnant of the left-hand wing of a triptych altarpiece.^[8]

Influences

• 
  Annunciation, Melchior Broederlam, c. 1398. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
• 
  Detail from a folio from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut, c. 1405–1408. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris
• 
  Folio 26r, Annunciation, “Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Limbourg brothers, c. 1411–1416.
• 
  Nativity, Robert Campin, c. 1420. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon

Attribution

The panel was thought to be by Hubert van Eyck throughout the 19th century, until his better-known brother Jan, became more favoured from the early 20th century. This debate occurred during a period when Early Netherlandish painting (ENA) was undergoing a resurgence in interest and reappraisal, and new research was shedding light on identifying the individual artists and their artistic development.^[9][10]

By the 1930s, the attribution had become a matter of contention between the leading ENA scholars Erwin Panofsky (who attributed Jan van Eyck) and Max Jakob Friedländer (who favoured Christus), with other art historians taking the “middle view” that it was a copy Christus had made of a lost Jan van Eyck painting.^[9]

Writing in 1935,Panofsky dismissed the possibility of Christus’ hand on the basis that its “composition, colourisation and perspective” are too old-fashioned (“archaic”) to have been completed during Christus’ mature period. He concluded that the Friedsam Annunciation was “beyond the capabilities of Petrus Christus, who, with all his skill and soundness, never achieved that peculiar richness and…homogeneous density which distinguishes the works of the brothers van Eyck.”^[11]

It has been confidently attributed to Christus since the 1960s.^[5][10]

Provenance

The businessman and leading art collector Michael Friedsam bequeathed the panel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on his death in 1931,^[10] as part of a much larger donation that included important Northern Renaissance works by Gerard David, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Pieter de Hooch.^[12]

References

Sources