The Annunciation
Bernardo Daddi (active c. 1320-1348) · c. 1335
The archangel Gabriel approaches the Virgin, who draws back in surprise at his greeting, under a gold ground that turns the whole scene into a vision. Behind Gabriel stands a second angel, a most unusual witness to the Annunciation and a detail found in almost no other version of the subject. The figures are slender and graceful, the colours soft, the folds of the drapery falling in long curves. The panel has been cut on all four sides, most of all at the top and the bottom, so the composition was once larger.
Bernardo Daddi was the most refined of Giotto's Florentine followers, and the museum dates this panel to about thirteen thirty five. The back is coated with blue paint over an older layer decorated in places with arabesques, which suggests the panel was made to be seen from both sides or was once part of a larger piece of furniture or shrine. It came to France in eighteen sixty one with the Campana collection, catalogued with a question mark as Simone Martini, and entered the Louvre in eighteen sixty three under the name of Agnolo Gaddi before the attribution to Daddi was established.
Did You Know? A second angel stands behind Gabriel, an addition almost never seen in Annunciation scenes, and nobody knows quite why Daddi put him there.
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