The panel contains a number of perspective and spatial anomalies that make it especially complex. The viewer has a bird's eye view, the framing is slightly left-of-centre, while the lack of a view of a horizon indicates that it was somewhat unskilfully cut down on three sides from a larger painting: art historians generally assume that it is a remnant of a left-hand wing of a triptych.[3]
Detail of Gabriel's wings and hand raised on blessing
Mary is announced by the Gabriel who kneels before her. She wears a blue robe and reads from a small book of hours as a dove hovers above her. Gabriel has brightly coloured wings and wears red and white liturgical vestments.[4] She stands in a slightly elevated niche at the church's doorway, dressed in blue and holding a small prayerbook, most likely a book of hours.
To her left and before her, Gabriel kneels in what appears to be an enclosed garden, a common motif to symbolise chastity. He wears a white dress covered by a bright red overcoat.[5]
The floor of the niche is lined with multicoloured tiles decorated with geometric and floral patterns. The steps of the church are lined by the words "REGINA CELI LET[ARE]" ("Queen of Heaven, Rejoice"), which are painted but presented as if inscriptions.[6]
The architecture of the church is complex, with features of the Romanesque on the right and Gothic on the left. Art historians thus interpret the building as marking the changes brought by the transition from the Old to the New Testaments.[1]
Attribution
The panel was thought to be by Hubert van Eyck throughout the 19th century, until his better-known brother Jan, became more favoured from the early 20th century. This debate occurred during a period when Early Netherlandish painting (ENA) was undergoing a resurgence in interest and reappraisal, and new research was shedding light on identifying the individual artists and their artistic development.[7][8]
By the 1930s, the attribution had become a matter of contention between the leading ENA scholars Erwin Panofsky (who attributed Jan van Eyck) and Max Jakob Friedländer (who favoured Christus), with other art historians taking the "middle view" that it was a copy Christus had made of a lost Jan van Eyck painting.[7]
Writing in 1935,Panofsky dismissed the possibility of Christus' hand on the basis that its "composition, colourisation and perspective" are too old-fashioned ("archaic") to have been completed during Christus' mature period. He concluded that the Friedsam Annunciation was "beyond the capabilities of Petrus Christus, who, with all his skill and soundness, never achieved that peculiar richness and...homogeneous density which distinguishes the works of the brothers van Eyck."[9]
It has been confidently attributed to Christus since the 1960s.[6][8]
Panofsky, Erwin. "The Friedsam Annunciation and the Problem of the Ghent Altarpiece". The Art Bulletin, volume 17, number 4, December 1935. JSTOR3045596
Russell, John. "The Iconography of the Friedsam Annunciation". The Art Bulletin, volume 60, number 1, March 1978, pp. 24–27. JSTOR3049740
Upton, Joel Morgan. Petrus Christus: His Place in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989. ISBN0-2710-0672-2
Ward, John. "A New Look at the Friedsam Annunciation". The Art Bulletin, volume 50, number 2, June 1968, pp. 184–187. JSTOR3048532
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