Castilian School. Circa 1500. Lot n° 19

"The Annunciation" Oil on panel. 119 x 70 cm. The Annunciation is a very rich iconographic episode with multiple variants. Most of the details of this passage were provided by the apocryphal gospels, fundamentally the Protoevangelium of Santiago and the Gospel of the Nativity of the Virgin, texts disclosed in Europe through the Speculum Historiae of Vicent de Beauvais, and, above all, through the Golden Legend of Santiago de la Vorágine. The composition, set in the chambers of the Virgin, is limited to just four characters: the Virgin, Saint Gabriel, the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit. The Virgin appears kneeling on a reddish carpet and before a dais on which a jug of lilies (an emblem of the Virgin Mary) and an open book rests – Réau specifies that Mary would have been accompanied by the Bible, although according to the Fathers of the Church it could be that the book is Isaiah's predictions – it is arranged on a luxurious green cloth. In her hands she carries a small book that she was reading at the time that Saint Gabriel appeared. The Archangel is also placed in the foreground. He is shown as genuflecting, in his left hand he carries a messenger's cane topped with a flower and around which there is a phylactery, which usually carries the motto "Ave Maria, gratia plena". The anonymous painter, who has not yet mastered perspective and who tries to achieve it through the play with two-colours on the floor tiles, shows that he has very superficial knowledge of the new Renaissance lexicon that was prevailing at the time, so much so that despite the fact that he introduces certain elements typical of the Renaissance decorative and constructive repertoire (laurels, caissons, semicircular arches) he also includes some Gothic archaisms, such as the tracery on the side of the dais or the use of golden brocades for the robes of Saint Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. Consequently, both characters wear very rich clothes, with an abundance of golden embroidered fabrics and pearls. In the upper part of the room, where there is room for a bed with curtains and an open window closed with a grille is a striking golden glow, worked with scratches, inside which is the dove of the Holy Spirit, which is struck by the powerful lightning that carries God the Father outside the building, on some clouds and a twilight background. The author of this interesting panel would have been one of the hundreds of anonymous masters who worked in Castile during the first years of the 16th century and who, despite trying to introduce a sometimes half-baked Renaissance language, still maintained certain Gothic remnants. The painter is characterized by the flatness of the forms, by the swollen faces with a serious countenance, by the broken folds and marked contours, by the use of brocades in the clothing, by the somewhat anecdotal representation of the episode and by a certain horror vacui which leads him to fill the composition with as many elements as possible. Despite not being able to attribute it directly to him or to any master around him, the style of the panel reminds us of the aesthetic vocabulary of the so-called Master of the Carnations, active mainly in the diocese of Segovia in the transition from the 15th to the 16th century.  In short, it is an interesting late-Gothic panel, with Hispano-Flemish influence, which stands out for its anecdotalism and for its attractive colours, especially for the greenish and reddish tones cleverly combined with white, blue and gold. We would like to thank Dr. Javier Baladrón, doctor in Art History, for the identification and cataloguing of this work.