Hans MemlingDutch, 1494Annunciation
The Annunciation
About the painting
The Annunciation is a panel-painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation as the archangel Gabriel's announces to the Virgin Mary that she will conceive and become the mother of Jesus, as described in the Gospel of Luke. The painting was executed in the 1480s and transferred to canvas from its original oak panel sometime after 1928. It is today held in the Robert Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The panel shows Mary in a domestic interior with two attendant angels. Gabriel is dressed in ecclesiastical robes, while a dove hovers above Mary, representing the Holy Spirit. It expands upon the Annunciation wing of Rogier van der Weyden's Saint Columba Altarpiece of c. 1455. According to the art historian Maryan Ainsworth, the work is a "startlingly original image, rich in connotations for the viewer or worshiper".
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The iconography focuses on the Virgin's purity. Her swoon foreshadows the Crucifixion of Jesus, and the panel emphasizes her role as mother, bride, and Queen of Heaven. The original frame survived until the 19th century and was inscribed with a date believed to be 1482; modern art historians have suggested that the number's final digit was a 9, which would give a date of 1489. In 1847, the art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen described the panel as one of Memling's "finest and most original works". In 1902, it was exhibited in Bruges at the Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges, after which it underwent cleaning and restoration. The banker Philip Lehman bought it in 1920 from the Radziwiłł family, in whose collection it might have been since the 16th century; Antoni Radziwiłł discovered it on a family estate in the early 19th century. At that time, it had been pierced through with an arrow and required restoration.
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1975.1.113
Meanwhile, in the life of Hans Memling
The whole life1466–1494 · Workplace
Bruges
between 1470 and 1480
Marries Anna de Valkenaere
Sometime between 1470 and 1480 Memling marries Anna de Valkenaere; the couple have three sons, Jan, Cornelis and Nicolaas.
1480
Among the richest burghers: a loan to Maximilian I
A tax document of 1480 lists Memling among the wealthiest citizens of Bruges: his name is on the list of 875 burghers obliged to subscribe to the loan Maximilian I of Austria raised to finance his war against France. It does not appear on later lists of this kind.
1480 and 1486
Two of Memling’s apprentices join the guild
The registers of the painters’ guild of Bruges name two apprentices who served their time with Memling and paid their dues on admission to the guild in 1480 and 1486.
