Where to See Carlo Crivelli: The Annunciation, Painted Flies and Gold That Stands Up

Gabriel has reached the right street, but somebody has stopped him outside the house. In The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, the bishop kneeling beside the angel holds a model town. He appears to be making a case for its inhabitants while Mary waits indoors. London’s National Gallery owns this 1486 picture, in which the announcement of Christ’s birth has acquired a municipal delegation. Emidius is the patron saint of Ascoli Piceno. He has brought his town with him.

London: a message from heaven and another from Rome

Ascoli had received news of a grant of self-government on 25 March 1482, the feast of the Annunciation. The coincidence linked local politics to sacred history. Four years later, the Franciscan commission for The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius commemorated that event. Mary’s doorway frames her almost like a second altarpiece inside the larger one. Gabriel faces a barred window, while we have a direct view into her room. The picture gives its viewers an access that even its angel lacks.

A cucumber and an apple occupy the front edge, where they seem liable to roll into our space. The apple’s connection with the Fall is familiar; the cucumber has produced less settled explanations. There is no need to solve every object before enjoying the disturbance it causes. Follow the street into the distance, then return to that vegetable. Crivelli offers a deep, ordered town and immediately places something across the boundary between its imaginary space and the room in which you stand.

Venice had been less accommodating to the painter. In 1457 Crivelli was convicted there of adultery. He later worked in Zara and spent most of his career in the Marche, making altarpieces for towns such as Ascoli and Matelica. His paintings kept their taste for fruit garlands and imitation marble. These are portable devices, useful for turning a wooden panel into something that seems furnished, inhabited and capable of reaching out towards a worshipper.

The fabrics in the National Gallery’s Matelica Altarpiece had a particularly attentive local audience. The ruling Ottoni family owned textile workshops, and Matelica manufactured luxury cloth. Look for a repeated pattern in the hangings, then in Saint Sebastian’s sleeve. Crivelli reused designs while changing their colours and scale. What first seems an inexhaustible wardrobe turns out to involve practical economies. The Madonna’s ceremonial dress could speak to people who knew exactly how silk and woven gold were made.

Milan: a candle survives the broken ensemble

An earthquake destroyed Camerino’s cathedral in 1799 and probably damaged the altarpiece whose centre is now Brera’s Madonna della Candeletta. Later cutting and repainting further altered the panel. Yet the little candle on the step still appears to be held upright by a drop of wax. The flowers and fruit resemble offerings somebody has just put down. After the history of the dismantled ensemble, this tiny household expedient feels unexpectedly immediate. The candle needs only its patch of wax to stand.

Spend a moment looking from that candle to the Madonna’s long fingers in Madonna della Candeletta. Their precision belongs to a world of polished surfaces and deliberately arranged objects. You may find yourself inspecting the construction of the scene before attending to the figures’ relationship. That is part of the pleasure of visiting Crivelli in person. A reproduction can deliver the whole arrangement at once; the painting lets a small detail hold you up on the way through it.

Amsterdam: the jar comes off the surface

The Rijksmuseum’s Mary Magdalen travelled through a very different catastrophe. Sold from Berlin in 1935, it entered Fritz Mannheimer’s collection. In 1940 it was purchased from his estate for Hitler’s projected museum in Linz; it was recovered after the war. On our autumn 2026 check, the panel was in room 0.2. Its narrow format gives the standing saint very little room to turn. Her ointment jar commands attention before we have begun to follow the folds of her clothes.

Some of that jar’s presence is physical. Crivelli used raised gesso beneath the gilding, building parts of the object out from the panel. The halo and ornaments also reward attention to relief. Move a little to one side, within the space allowed by the museum, and watch how the light behaves. A painted shadow and a shadow cast by actual raised material are different things. Crivelli can use both within the same figure, giving the eye more than one reason to believe in gold.

New York: the fly that has not landed

At the Metropolitan Museum, the fly on Madonna and Child seems to have arrived independently of the painter. It belongs to the design, of course. The bird in Christ’s hand and the fruit above add further things to decipher, but the insect first makes us doubt the surface itself. On our autumn 2026 check, this small panel was in gallery 606. Its scale matters: an illusion that looks exaggerated on a large screen becomes a much more intimate provocation in front of the original.

For a Crivelli visit, choose one detail to follow across the pictures. You could compare the fruit, or watch how cloth falls over the edge of a stone ledge. Keep the larger religious scene in view, but allow yourself to get distracted. Leave time to change your distance and angle, especially before gilded panels. The smallest objects often need the most patient looking, and none of them improves if you rush to tick off the next saint.