On view
Duane Wilder Gallery
The Annunciation,
1560s
For Princeton University classes visiting the Museum, Nosadella’s Annunciation continues to spark lively conversations about the artist’s process and use of the oil medium to alter details of the painting. Examining the panel closely, students are amazed to find a ghostlike outline to the right of Mary that reveals the former placement of the archangel Gabriel’s head, and a faint form in the center of the golden light showing the artist’s initial positioning of the dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Referred to as pentimenti (from the Italian word pentimento, meaning repentance), such traces of the earlier layers of the painting speak to Nosadella’s practice of revision and correction and remind students of their own iterative methods of studying and learning.
Veronica Maria White, Curator of Teaching and Learning, Princeton University Art Museum
More Context
Handbook Entry
Once considered a work of the Bolognese master Pellegrino Tibaldi, this <em>Annunciation</em> has now been attributed to Giovanni Francesco Bezzi (called Nosadella), also active in Bologna. A drawing in a private collection helps reconstruct its genesis: the angel originally approached the Virgin Mary from the left, but the artist then flipped the drawing and showed him approaching from the right, as in the painting. Evidence in the painting also helps document the painter’s earlier intentions. Gabriel’s head was once positioned higher, and the placement of the dove was moved up; the alterations can be seen through x-radiographs and in <em>pentimenti</em>. The changes might have been made to accord better with the original setting, which is still unknown, as is the patron. Especially striking in this composition is the attention to believable anatomical rendering and to the Virgin Mary’s pivoting movement to look over her shoulder at the angel. In Italian Annunciation scenes, the angel usually approaches the Virgin Mary from the left. Michelangelo had experimented with an Annunciation from the right, however, in drawings made about 1549 to be executed in paintings by his friend Marcello Venusti; a Michelangelo drawing in the British Museum is especially close to the work shown here, as is the painting based on it, in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome. Since Michelangelo died in 1564, it may be that Nosadella wished to honor the master in this <em>Annunciation</em>, in which muscular, acrobatic cherubs recall the spirit of some of Michelangelo’s Herculean babies.
More About This Object
Information
1560s
- Luigi Salerno, "The picture gallery of Vincenzo Giustiniani: III", Burlington magazine 102, no. 685 (Apr., 1960): p. 135-148+159., p. 137, no. 59
- Jürgen Winkelmann, "Sul problema Nosadella-Tibaldi", Paragone. Arte 27, no. 317/319 (Jul.-Sept., 1976): p. 101-115., p. 108-111; pl. 80
- Italian paintings, 1550-1780: [catalogue of an exhibition held at] P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd ..., 26th May to 2nd July 1976, (London: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., 1976)., cat. no. 2 (color illus.); pl. 11
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1976," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 36, no. 1 (1977): p. 28-40., p. 39
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Giovanni Michele Silos, Pinacotheca, sive, romana pictura et sculptura (1673), (Treviso: Canova, 1979).
, Vol. 1: p. 105-106; Vol. 2: p. 101, 248 - Martin Levine Dunkelman, "The holy family with St. John the Baptist: Nosadella or Tibaldi?", Perceptions: an annual publication of the Indianapolis Museum of Art 1 (1981)., p. 49; fig. 9; p. 50, notes 19, 20
- Diane DeGrazia, Correggio and his legacy: sixteenth-century Emilian drawings, (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1984)., p. 220-221
- Jürgen Winkelman, in Vera Fortunati Pietrantonio, ed., Pittura bolognese del '500, (Bologna, Italy: Grafis, 1986)., Vol. 2: p. 467 (illus.); p. 460
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 252 (illus.)
- Elizabeth Llewellyn and Cristiana Romalli, Drawing in Bologna, 1500-1600: Sotheby Courtauld exhibition: University of London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, 18th June-31st August 1992, (London: Courtauld Institute, 1992)., cat. no. 37
- Silvia Danesi Squarzina, "The collections of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani: part I", Burlington magazine 139, no. 1136 (Nov., 1997): pp. 766-791., p. 787, no. 134
- Jennifer Schubert ,"Bib Nosadella's Annunciation," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 59, no. 1/2 (2000): p. 62–68., pp. 62–67, figs. 1–7
- Jennifer Schubert, "Un Nosadella nella Collezione Giustiniani", in Francesca Cappelletti, ed., Decorazione e collezionismo a Roma nel Seicento: vicende di artisti, committenti e mercanti, (Roma: Gangemi, 2003)., p. 81-86; p. 81, fig. 1
- Giovanni Francesco Bezzi and Norman E. Muller, The making of a masterpiece: Nosadella's Annunciation, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2010).
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 121
