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Probably by Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?), 'The Annunciate Virgin: Frame Roundel (right)', about 1450?

Key facts
Full title The Annunciate Virgin: Frame Roundel (right)
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 13.6 × 13.6 cm
Acquisition credit Bought, 1857
Inventory number NG584.6
Location Not on display
Collection Main Collection
The Annunciate Virgin: Frame Roundel (right)
Probably by Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?)
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This small roundel of the Virgin Mary 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. Other panels from the same altar are also in the National Gallery’s collection.

This is half of an image of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would conceive the son of God. Gabriel is shown in another roundel on the opposite side of the altarpiece.

We see the Virgin with her arms crossed in front of her chest in a gesture of acceptance. She is reading a book which lies open on a book stand; according to medieval tradition Mary was thought to have been reading the Old Testament prediction of the virgin birth of the messiah at the moment of Gabriel’s arrival.

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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.