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Probably by Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?), 'Gabriel: Frame Roundel (Left)', about 1450?

Key facts
Full title Gabriel: Frame Roundel (Left)
Artist Probably by Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?)
Artist dates 1427 - 1454
Group Pratovecchio Altarpiece
Date made about 1450?
Medium and support egg tempera on wood
Dimensions 13.2 × 13.2 cm
Acquisition credit Bought, 1857
Inventory number NG584.5
Location Not on display
Collection Main Collection
Gabriel: Frame Roundel (Left)
Probably by Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?)
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This small roundel of the Angel Gabriel comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in Florence in about 1450. It was made for a side altar in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio.

This is half of an image of the Annunciation, the moment Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would conceive the son of God. Mary is shown in another roundel on the opposite side of the altarpiece. Gabriel is holding a lily, a traditional symbol of the Virgin’s purity, and raises his hand in a gesture of blessing.

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Pratovecchio Altarpiece

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This altarpiece is a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) but parts of it are missing. The two halves were not originally next to each other, but were on either side of a painting of the Assumption of the Virgin formerly in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.

The whole altarpiece once stood on a side altar in the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni. Very unusually we know quite a lot about its commissioning. In June 1400 one Michele di Antonio Vaggi, a Camaldolese monk, made a will asking his mother Johanna to found a chapel at San Giovanni, for which she was to provide a ‘tavola picta’ (a painted altarpiece).

Both Johanna and Michele’s patron saints appear in the main panels, with Camaldolese saints in the pinnacles. This is presumably the altarpiece made for their family chapel, although it wasn't painted until the 1450s.