Lot 2009 Dα

This small oak panel depicts the scene of the annunciation in a fineness akin to a miniature. The angel Gabriel, dressed in an alb, approaches the Virgin, who is depicted kneeling at a prie dieu in a Gothic interior. Disturbed from Her prayer, the Virgin turns Her head slightly towards the angel, who holds his right hand aloft and a sceptre in his left. Beside him we see a small dove in a gloriole with its wings outstretched as a symbol that the Holy Spirit came to Mary and that she would bear the son of God.
The annunciation was among the most important motifs in late Medieval art, and artists often painted the subject in a contemporary setting. The present work depicts a charming Gothic interior with panels of tracery to the back wall and a window with a view out onto a landscape painted in blue and green tones. The floor tiles, shown receding to depict perspective, and the red bed with curtains to protect against the cold would have been well known to contemporary observers. However, the lower section of the depiction is closed by a flower meadow, an impossible detail for an interior, and one which catapults the entire scene into the religious sphere. In the upper right corner we see a statue of Moses with the tablets of the law beneath a canopy, forming a typological link between the new covenant established by Christ and the covenant of the Old Testament.
The work's composition is based on those of Rogier van der Weyden, especially the annunciation scenes painted in the 1440s and 1450s now kept in the Museé du Louvre and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (“Kolumba Altarpiece”). Dr. Stephan Kemperdick of the Staatliche Museen Berlin dates this piece to around 1520. According to Kemperdick, it was painted in the Southern Netherlands, possibly in Bruges.