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Artist or Maker: Circle of Roger van der Weyden (Tournai c. 1399-1464 Brussels)
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Provenance: Anonymous sale; Sedelmeyer, Paris, 1907.
W.M. Mensing; sale, Frederik Muller, 13 April 1920.
with J.O. Leegenhoek, Paris, 1989.
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Literature: M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, II, Leiden and Brussels, 1967, p. 67, no. 9b, as a 15th century copy after the Louvre painting.
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE COLLECTOR
As noted by Friedländer, loc. cit., this is an adaptation of the central panel of Rogier's Annunciation triptych of 1432-5, of which the central panel is in the Louvre, Paris, and the presumed wings are in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin. Rogier's composition, probably the first to represent the Annunciation in the thalamus, or bedroom, had a substantial impact on his contemporaries and wider circle of the second half of the fifteenth century (for which see A.M. Neuner, Das Triptychon in der frühen altniederländische Malerei. Bildsprache und Aussagekraft einer Kompositionsform, Frankfurt, 1995, pp. 77-9).
The present work, an adaptation by one such follower, is like most other such versions including the sceptre and banderole in the depiction of the archangel Gabriel, a more traditional depiction that was probably returned to by Rogier himself in the Annunciation of which a fragment depicting the Virgin survives (Sussex, Petworth House) along with a presumed early copy of the lost Angel of the Annunciation (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz). The image in the gold medallion hanging over the bed in the present work represents Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law.
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