Annunciation (Orazio Gentileschi, 1600)

Produced in Rome for an unknown private commissioner, it is now in Álvaro Saieh and Ana Guzmán's residence as part of the Alana collection in Newark, Delaware, USA.

[1] It shows Christ descending from the heavens surrounded by God the Father, the dove of the Holy Spirit and angels carrying the cross and crown of thorns, an iconography of the Annunciation condemned by the Counter-Reformation.

[1] The artist uses the natural veins in the stone for the colour and texture of the prie-Dieu, architectural background, clouds and halos around Jesus and the dove.

The technique was rarely used by Orazio, though he did paint a Madonna Presenting the Christ Child to Saint Francis on marble (which was formerly in the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt but was probably destroyed during the Second World War[2]) and a David Contemplating Goliath's Head on lapis lazuli (now in a private collection after only reappearing on the art market in 2012 and going unmentioned in the analysis of paintings of the same title[4] in the 2001 catalogue published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The work's composition has similarities to Gentileschi's mature masterworks Madonna (Darmstadt[2]) and Annunciation, whilst the two figures' poses draw on those in Scipione Pulzone's 1587 painting and Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio's 1565 engraving of the same subject.