Niccolò Di Pietro Gerini The Virgin and Angel Annunciate, ca. 1385-1390 Tempera and gold leaf on panel: Together with a Blessing Christ in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, this pair of panels originally served as the pinnacles of a large altarpiece, the remaining section of which may be identical with the Baptism of Christ between SS. Peter and Paul in the National Gallery, London. That work has been convincingly identified with a painting commissioned for the high altar of Santa Maria degli Angeli, the mother church of the Camaldolese branch of Benedictine monks in Florence. Such a provenance is corroborated for the present pair, as well as the related Christ in Munich, by the presence of the white mantle – that favored by the Camaldolese monks – worn by the figures of the Archangel Gabriel and Christ. |