Annunciation

The Annunciation carved in Majella stone and once attributed to the Abruzzese goldsmith, sculptor and painter Nicola da Guardiagrele, comes from an aedicule of a private garden near the church of San Domenico in Tocco da Casauria (PE), owned in the 19th century by the Filomusi and Bonanni families. The rough surface of its back suggests that the group was originally made to be placed against the wall of a church doorway. The group was sold in 1904 to the Roman antique dealerAlfredo Barsanti and later bought by his colleague Giuseppe Sangiorgi, also active in Rome. In 1907 the artwork was acquired by the Italian government, thus preventing its transfer to the United States in the famous American collection of Isabella Stewart Gardner, who was already in negotiations to buy it. The Annunciation entered the collection of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, the principal Italian museum of sculpture, as there was no national institution in Abruzzo at the time.

Recently attributed to the German sculptor Walter Monich, active in the fabbrica of the Milan Cathedral between the late 14th and the early 15th centuries, the group can be dated to the second decade of the 15th century. The Annunciation is not the only artwork made by the German artist in the Abruzzo region. In 1412 Walter Monich signed the Funeral monument of the Caldora family in the abbey of Santo Spirito in Sulmona and in 1415 he probably made the Niccolò di Giacobuccio Gaglioffi monument for the church of San Domenico in L’Aquila, which was lost after the 1703 earthquake.