Annunciation

The Annunciation by Andrea Solari, dated 1506 and with a complicated provenance that passed through the Munich Central Collecting Point after World War II, depicts the moment when the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would bear the Son of God — among the most frequently painted subjects in Christian art. The Munich Central Collecting Point was the Allied facility used after 1945 to collect, identify, and repatriate artworks looted or displaced during the war; paintings passing through it often have complex twentieth-century histories. Solari's Annunciation would have demonstrated his mature synthesis of Leonardesque technique with Lombard compositional tradition.

Oil on panel with the two-figure Annunciation format: the angel approaching from the left, the Virgin typically shown reading or at prayer on the right, the space between them charged with the drama of divine communication. Solari's sfumato handling would have given both figures the soft atmospheric modeling he developed through Leonardo's influence.