Annunciation the Angel

Half of a two-figure subject

The Annunciation requires two presences: the messenger and the woman he addresses. This entry's title names only one of them — the angel. In the tradition, the messenger of the Annunciation is Gabriel, whose office is announcement and whose usual attribute is a lily; the convention is stable enough that a picture can leave him unnamed and still be understood. What the record supports here is the isolation itself: an entry catalogued as the angel of an Annunciation rather than as an Annunciation.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1594 and gives Tintoretto, an Italian painter, with the style term Mannerism Late Renaissance. It measures 115 x 93 cm and the measured colour families are ochre and yellow. The recorded location is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Why isolation changes the rank

An angel inside a full Annunciation is legible by relation: he is the one arriving, and the other figure tells you so. An angel alone has to be legible by attribute, and that throws the whole weight of identification onto the conventions of costume, wing and object. This is the point at which the celestial hierarchy stops being a doctrine and becomes a working problem for painters — a Virtue and a Power look alike, while Gabriel alone remains recognisable, because he alone was given things to carry.