17th Century, Annunciation

17th century
Annunciation
Oil on board
Cm 20x15, with frame: cm 37x33

In this small-sized painting, a canonical Annunciation is depicted. Mary is kneeling in front of the archangel Gabriel, who carries in her hands and brings as a gift candied lilies, symbol of purity, to remember the virginity of the mother of God. The scene is enveloped by divine light whose rays radiate from the dove of the Holy Spirit. The simultaneous descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, indicated by the archangel, contributes to make clear the role of Mary as future Queen of Heaven as Mater Dei. The figurated instant is that in which the Virgin, seen the approaching of the archangel, perceives its fiery spirit and lowers her gaze, unable to support so much divine beauty. The only concrete reference to the daily context is the volume that Mary was reading candidly before the divine apparition. The work, performed in the seventeenth century, reinterprets an iconographic scheme whose fortune has been consolidated, in Italy as well as in the north of the Alps, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.