BOTTICELLI (SANDRO DI MARIANO FILIPEPI)
THE VIRGIN ANNUNCIATE
Both panels were originally part of an altarpiece for a small portable altar. They had been the panels on either side of the central composition. They have been placed together in an old 16th-century frame – not the original one. They were often referred to in the literature as The Annunciation, although they do not present the given subject as a scene. The same portable altar had two other panels with depictions of St. Dominic and St. Jerome, held in the Hermitage. These panels were created during the master's late period.
Provenance: in Florence till the beginning of the 1860s; held in the collection of Count A.S.Stroganov in St. Petersburg after 1862; acquired by the Hermitage Museum from the Stroganov Palace-Museum (Petrograd) in 1922; in the Pushkin Museum since 1928.
