Martini, Simone (c.1284-1344)
Madonna dell’Annunciazione (Madonna from the Annunciation Scene)
1340–1344
Tempera on poplar panel, 30.5 x 21.5 cm
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
This painting was once the right-hand wing of a folding diptych showing the Annunciation. The left wing, with its image of the Archangel Gabriel, is now in the National Gallery in Washington. Simone Martini was one of the leading late-Gothic masters. His works are marked by refined colour and linear rhythms, a wealth of ornament and graceful figures. Seated on a cushion, Simone‘s Madonna is the very embodiment of elegant femininity. Her head bowed, she listens calmly to the words of the heavenly messenger, telling her that she is to give birth to the Saviour of the human race. Here the artist sought to embody not the physical but the spiritual in the appearance of Mary. Her figure seems to have no corporeal volume and rather looks like a silhouette against the warm reddish gold ground. (SHM)
Left wing:
Martini, Simone (c.1284-1344)
L’Angelo dell’Annunciazione
c.1330
National Gallery of Art, Washington