Offered by Galerie Sismann
Around 1500, the artistic productions produced in northern Italy still echo the Gothic tradition. Far from the rigorous innovations of the Florentine Renaissance, this Annunciation testifies by its precious character and its poetry to the prevalence then of this taste for late Gothic in the princely courts.
Gabriel presents himself here to the Virgin in a dynamic attitude. He has just landed to announce to Mary the mystery of the Incarnation: she will bear the Son of God. The latter welcomes the news with modesty, head bowed, hands joined in a sign of prayer. The Archangel blesses her with his right hand while he once held a lily in his left, symbol of the virginity of the Virgin.
Both wear long fabrics that reveal tiny slippers at the ground level. They conceal their slender and hieratic bodies, draped in elegant tubular folds. The asserted vertical character of this drapery, arranged in straight folds animated at the level of Gabriel's belt by a gathered and puffy fabric effect, as well as the curls of the Archangel's hair, which radiate in cascade around his face, are characteristics shared by a significant number of sculptures from northern Italy.
If the typology and the softness of the forms of our group plead for a Lombard attribution, the sought-after treatment of the hairstyle of the angel and the smooth faces with regular painted features of the protagonists seem to link it more precisely to a corpus of works produced around of Milan at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century. Among them are the Musician Angel from the church of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, attributed to Giacomo del Torre and certain figures of angels made by Giacomo del Maino and the Master of Trognano. The formal kinships are numerous, let us also note among them the silhouettes similarly animated by a protruding knee, the simplicity of the volumes or the calm rhythm of the fabrics which hug the bodies in supple tubular folds.
As evidenced by the Nativity of Rivolta d'Adda produced around 1480 by Bongiovanni Lupi, this formal language was widely used in northern Italy.
But its most brilliant implementations are attributable to the scissors of the brothers Giovanni Pietro and Giovanni Ambrogio De Donati, whose activity is documented in the Duchy of Milan between 1478 and 1528. Their Adoration of the Child, executed around 1495 and today now kept at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, reveals a great proximity to our ensemble. We can admire the same predilection for the hair with large curls distributed in a corolla around the face of the protagonist, a similar way of marking his waist with a puffy gather of his tunic and more generally this execution of the similar, precious and refined sculpture. The confrontation of our Annunciation with the Altar of Piety of Orselina, also made by the two brothers, confirms this relationship of style and spirit.
This bears witness to our sculptor's knowledge of the works of the Donati brothers, but also to the undeniable role that these artists were able to play in the spread of Lombard late Gothic around 1500.
©Galerie Sismann
Published in Sismann, G. ; Lequio, M., Renaissance : France-Italie ( 1500-1600), Illustria, 2021, p. 60-63
