The Annunciation

Large alabaster plaque carved in relief with traces of original gilding
Dimensions: 31 x 28.5 x 4.8 cm in a natural wood frame
Dimensions: 39.2 x 33 x 10.4 cm
Slight damage (hands of God the Father and the Angel), the dove's head broken and reattached, and breaks across the width of the plaque.

Compared to:
-Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Scene of the Annunciation, circa 1503, original print, 29.8 x 21.1 cm, Paris, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris, inv. no. GDUT 4139
Related literature:
-Sub-editor Brigitte d'Hainaut-Zveny, Miroirs du Sacré, les altarpieces sculptés à Bruxelles, XV-XVIème siècles, CFC éditions, Brussels, 2005; -Till-Holger Borchert, Tilman Riemenschneider, The Annunciation, an important alabaster relief, Daniel Katz edition, London, 2012; -Aleksandra Lipinska, Movin sculptures, Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th centuries in Central and Northern Europe, Brill, Leiden, 2015.

This scene of the Annunciation, executed by a Brabant workshop around 1520, must have been part of an altarpiece dedicated to the Life of the Virgin or of Christ. The two figures are set in an interior still largely in the Gothic tradition, inspired by the works of Jan van Eyck (Virgin and Angel of the Annunciation, painted panels of the Ghent altarpiece, 1432, Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent) and Rogier van der Weyden (1400-1464) (see Workshop of Rogier Van der Weyden, The Annunciation, oil on wood, around 1440, Paris, Musée du Louvre). The contextualization of the scene and the illusion of depth are in fact skillfully produced by the progressive cutting of the thickness of the alabaster plate and by the presence of the four-poster bed and the desk.