The rank, cut out of the exchange

An Annunciation is a transaction between two figures. Isolate one of them and the transaction disappears, leaving only the rank. That is what this entry is: the archangel Gabriel extracted from the scene and catalogued as a detail. The messenger becomes a subject in his own right, which is precisely the position the tradition normally denies to angels below the level of the three named ones.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1516 and gives Matthias Grünewald, a German painter, with Northern Renaissance as the style term. No dimensions are recorded. The measured colour families are ochre and red. No location is recorded.

The second largest group in the catalogue

Eight of the 224 works gathered here are by this painter, second only to the thirteen of one Northern contemporary, and six of those eight are recorded as details of the same altarpiece. So this painter enters the catalogue mostly in pieces. Four titles here name Gabriel, and eight name the Annunciation. The record supplies neither dimensions nor a location for this extract.