Diptych, bone and gilt bronze, the Annunciation, Italy, Florence or Venice, in the style of the late 15th century, made middle of the nineteenth century

The Diptych is assembled from cast gilt-bronze elements, with various ornaments in silver soldered on. It takes the form of a tabernacle, ornamented at the corners with scrolls, and below with pendant foliage decoration. The Annunciation is depicted taking place across the two leaves. The left leaf depicts the kneeling Angel Gabriel, who wears a garland around his head, and carries a blooming lily in his left hand. Above, in the lunette, God the Father is shown in half-length profile, blessing in the direction of the Dove of the Holy Spirit, which appears in the corresponding lunette of the right leaf. Below the Dove is the Virgin, who stands with head bowed, her right hand across her breast; in front of her is an elaborate lectern, carved on a separate bone piece. The backs of the diptych are elaborately decorated using a variety of techniques. There are niello pilaster to either side with candelabra and grotesque ornament; engraved foliage in the lunettes; an applied decoration representing a flaming brazier; and delicate pouncing in the background of a raised inscription that runs around four sides of the main field of each leaf.

Aquired in Paris from M. Piot in 1857 (£250) who is said to have obtained it in Venice. The method of mounting carvings in bone and ivory on a horn background seems to be peculiar to Italian work of this period.

This diptych of the Annunciation is made in Florence or Venice in the middle of the nineteenth century in a historicising style of the late 15th century. It shows on the left leaf a kneeling angel holding a lily, and in a lunette above, the half-length figure of God the Father. On the right leaf the Virgin stands before a lectern, and in the lunette is the Dove.

A similar diptych survives in the Wernher Collection, now at Ranger's House Blackheath. Both the diptychs appear to derive from a painted annunciation by Filippo Lippi of about 1420 in the Alte Pinakothek Munich, formerly in the convent of the Suore Murate in Florence. Filippo's painting was highly influential and was imitated several times in the years following its execution. It seems most likely that both works are the products of a highly competent mid-nineteenth century goldsmith and carver, probably working in Florence or Venice in the 1840s or early 1850s.

4355-1857