Annunciation
Unknown artist
1700–1900
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, heightened with brush and brown wash, white gouache, and gold paint on blue-toned tan laid paper
- Dimensions
- 20.2 × 14.4 cm (8 × 5 11/16 in.)
- Genre
- pen and ink drawings
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
gold paintdrawings (visual works)paintinkMythologypen and ink drawingsCrownsprints and drawingswhite gouachegouachewashmetallic paintbrown washprints and drawingcolored inkbrown inkChristian subjectswatercolorcoating (material)paper (fiber product)water-base paint
About
This drawing is not what it appears to be. It shows a typical Renaissance subject—the Annunciation, when the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear the son of God—and is executed in a technique common in Germany in the early 16th century. However, recent analysis has proven that this work is a forgery. An unknown draftsperson drew the composition on a sheet of old German paper datable to around 1500 but employed a blue pigment that was invented only in 1709. Created with the intent to deceive, the drawing passed through the art market and several private collections as an authentic 16th-century work.
