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Bernardo Cavallino
The Virgin Annunciate (c. 1645-1650)
oil on canvas on wood panel
85.5 × 70.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1968
Photo: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
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The Virgin Annunciate
(c. 1645-1650)
Medium
oil on canvas on wood panel
Measurements
85.5 × 70.0 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1968
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
Bernardo Cavallino was one of the most refined and poetic painters working in seventeenth-century Naples. However, very little is known about him due to a scarcity of documentary evidence. The Virgin Annunciate dates to Cavallino’s mature period in the second half of the 1640s. It would originally have been paired in an altarpiece with a painting of the Archangel Gabriel (now lost). The ray of light illuminating the Virgin’s face represents the Holy Spirit at the moment of Incarnation, when the Son of God was miraculously conceived as man. This dramatic lighting indicates Cavallino’s close artistic association with Caravaggio, Massimo Stanzione and Artemisia Gentileschi.
Artwork Details
Accession Number
1829-5
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Dame Carol Colburn-Grigor CBE through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Human Figures Religion and Mythology
Subjects (specific)
Annunciation to the Virgin Mary (Christian iconography) Blessed Virgin Mary (Christian character) chiaroscuro half figures profiles (figures) women (female humans)
Movements
Baroque
Provenance
Private collection, France with Hazlitt Gallery, London, by 1968 acquired from Hazlitt Gallery for the Felton Bequest, 1968.