The
two small panels which together form the Annunciation belonged to a triptych
painted for the Church of Friars Minor Conventual of S. Floriano, as it is
shown in a drawing found in the Sienna Library by Philiph Pouncey in 1965:
the drawing represents the two side panels with the Angel Gabriel and the
Virgin and a central panel, whose drawing is too faint to be intepreted -
according to someone it could be a Saint Gerolamo, while according to others
it could be a Saint Giovanni in Pathmo. The Sienna drawing, a late manneristic
copy from the original one by Lotto, also has a frame very similar to the
upper part of the polyptych of Ponteranica (1525) and so we believe it really
corresponds to the original one painted by the Venetian artist. Moreover,
as in the drawing the frame reaches the lower edge of the sheet of paper,
it may have included a wooden tabernacle too. When Mr.Morelli and Mr.Cavalcaselle
visited S. Floriano Church on May 9th 1861, they only found the Deposition
(1512) and Saint Lucy by Lotto, while the two small panels of the Angel and
the Virgin where found, and the central panel was already missing, in the
adjoining Franciscan monastery and they were estimated for the value of two
thousands lire. Therefore the triptych had already been dismembered at that
time.
In Lotto's Annunciations the interpretation of iconography is particularly original - we should only think of the beautiful one in Recanati - : the event remains sacral, but the painter hooks it overpoweringly to the domestic reality not like the interruption of a natural order but like the constant presence of God in everyday life. The "jesino" Angel with his mighty physical appearance is caught while gliding to the floor after the flight and his being "physical" is confirmed by his shadow cast on the "cotto"- floor and by his garments rumpled by what Mr. Berenson (1895) defined as a "breathtaking" movement.
Like
in a still, Lotto has stopped the moment before the Angel touches the ground:
the Angel is lit by a light coming from the left side, which makes the space
longer in a perspective sense. Light is the main character of this painting,
like in other paintings by Lotto : it is not a theatrical light in the Renaissance
style and it doesn't create definite shadows, it is more like "a stray
discontinuous puff" (Longhi, 1946) which makes colours vivid in a dynamic
rythm of lights and shadows.
The Angel's apparition, sudden and worrisome, surprises the Virgin, who is
reading holy books on her knees, wrapped up in her mantel like an almond.
The rotary movement of the two characters fills up the space and a force from
left to right pushes the Angel foreward, while the Virgin, as if she were
run over by a blast, withdraws and stretches out her arms with her hands open,
preparing her mind anxiously for the announcement.
The warm full-bodied colour red of the Virgin's dress contrasts the Angel's
garments of a cool bright blue, and this makes the different nature of the
two beings even more evident: the Virgin's human and terrestrial nature and
the Angel's supernatural and "aerial" one.
Gregorio Magno had already said that "angels are spirit if compared
to human bodies, but they are corporeal if compared with the supreme limitless
spirit of God". Therefore angels have an "aerial body" and
in the angel character of Jesi Annunciation Lotto admirably synthetizes the
two theological aspects of angelic nature: the more spiritual one nearer to
God, by giving the character the highest speed and aerial levity, and the
more terrestrial one nearer to mankind, by providing the Angel with a body
which can be seen and touched.
The two small panels, already restored on occasion of the exhibition "Lorenzo
Lotto in the Marches" in Ancona in 1981, underwent a new restoration
in 1995. The painting of the previous restoration had got dark and thick and
the latest polishing with volatile solvents has brought the original colours
and also an iconographic element to light, which had been hidden by an old
painting: it is a beautiful knotted green curtain behind the Virgin, on the
right, and its meaning is particularly important both from a formal point
of view, since it completes the work as it was originally, and from an interpretative
point of view, since the knot on the curtain, besides at the virginal nature
of conception, hints at the mystery of the mystical love union of the Virgin
with the Infant Jesus and therefore of human nature with the divine one.