Attributed to FRANCESCO PESELLINO The Annunciation. Circa 1450.

Attributed to FRANCESCO PESELLINO

(circa 1422 Florence 1457)
The Annunciation. Circa 1450.
Oil and tempera on panel.

47.2 × 63.3 cm.

Provenance:
- Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art collection, Kansas City (as attributed to Francesco Pesellino).
- Auction Christie's, New York, 13 January 1987, lot 93 (as Circle of Benozzo Gozzoli).
- Luigi Grassi Jr. (b. 1931) and Marco Grassi (1934–2025) collection, Florence, and Studio Grassi, New York (as Master of San Miniato).
- European private collection, since 2011.
- By inheritance to the present owner, European private collection.

Literature:
- Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri: Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge (Mass.) 1972, p. 25.
- Exh. cat. Siena tra purismo e liberty, Siena 1988, p. 189, footnote 15.
- Exh. cat. Bruno Marzi. Falsificazioni d'arte a Siena tra Ottocento e Novecento, Siena 1995, p. 203.
- Gianni Mazzoni: Quadri antichi del Novecento, Vicenza 2001, p. 353, no. 1 (as Giuseppe Catani, 1866–1945).

With an art historical analysis by Prof. Gaudenz Freuler, July 2026.

The painting is archived in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 12315.

The present Florentine Renaissance panel, with its gracefully staged depiction of the Annunciation to the Virgin, has a complex history of reception and restoration. Earlier literature was unable to assess the work adequately because it was based on a state of the painting substantially distorted by extensive later overpainting. This repeatedly led to the view that it was a historicist forgery of the late 19th or early 20th century.

The starting point for this misjudgement was a far-reaching reworking of the original paint layer, probably carried out in the 19th century. At that time a new landscape background with a view onto a Renaissance garden was added on the left, while the donor figure originally kneeling before the Virgin at the front edge of the image was completely covered. At the same time, the faces of the principal figures were overpainted and altered, largely obscuring the panel's original style. The arguments of those advocating the forgery theory were based exclusively on historical black-and-white photographs taken before restoration (see illustration in Mazzoni 2001, p. 353, no. 1).

Only a comprehensive conservation restoration once again revealed the original paint layer. The fine drawing of the faces, hands and garments re-emerged, impressively demonstrating the high quality of the original execution. A further technical examination of the materials at the Doerner Institut in Munich in 2011 confirmed the authenticity of this Florentine Renaissance painting.

It is noteworthy that these findings are now also shared by Gianni Mazzoni, who had previously been one of the most decisive advocates of the forgery theory. After receiving a high-resolution photograph of the painting in its restored state, he too no longer doubted the authenticity of the work.

Against this background, the question of authorship of this high-quality Annunciation arises anew. In the past, various Florentine painters active around the middle of the 15th century have been proposed as the creator of our panel. The fine linearity, lyrical conception of the figures, elegant movement of the garments and gentle modelling of the faces are particularly close to the art of Pesellino, who trained in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi (1406–1469).

There can be no doubt that the composition of the present Annunciation derives from pictorial inventions developed in the immediate circle of Fra Filippo Lippi's workshop. This becomes particularly clear when compared with Lippi's Annunciations in the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, whose fundamental iconographic and compositional ideas unmistakably resonate here. Lippi's pupil Francesco Pesellino drew on the same models in his Annunciation in the Courtauld Gallery in London and developed them into a distinctly personal interpretation.

Nevertheless, the figures appear calmer and more static, and the psychological conception of the encounter between the angel and the Virgin also differs markedly from the models by Lippi and Pesellino. Instead of reverential absorption, the two figures encounter one another more directly and dialogically.

It is precisely this independent shift of emphasis and stylistic deviation that suggests our Annunciation was created by a talented painter from Pesellino's closest workshop circle, who was highly accomplished in adopting his master's pictorial formula.

We thank Prof. Gaudenz Freuler for his scholarly assistance in cataloguing this lot.