FROM THE VAULT

After ten years in storage, the monumental Annunciation by Italian Baroque artist Benedetto Gennari II will return to view in early 2018. The Annunciation, which will occupy an entire wall in Gallery 8, is one of Gennari’s most important commissions. New scholarship by former Ringling curator, Dr. Virginia Brilliant, has revealed that the painting, completed in 1686, was commissioned by King James II of England for his new chapel in Whitehall Palace in London. The chapel was finished in 1687, and Gennari’s Annunciation served as the focal point of the altar wall. Gennari spent fourteen years at the English court, working first for Charles II and then for his successor, James II. James’s new chapel was short-lived; his reign ended in 1688 after only three years, and the chapel’s contents were dispersed soon after. However, the painting’s history prior to 1931, when it was acquired by John Ringling from Leger Galleries in London, is still unclear.

Benedetto Gennari II spent his youth in Bologna, studying painting under his uncle, the celebrated Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri). Guercino’s work is well represented in The Ringling’s collections, most notably by the large Annunciation on view in Gallery 8. Visitors to the gallery will be able to compare Guercino’s and Gennari’s large-scale treatments of the same subject.

Gennari’s Annunciation is being returned to view while several important works from The Ringling’s collections travel to two university museums in Florida—the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College—for an exhibition in 2018 entitled Dangerous Women