Main content
Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 3
Lesson 4: Northern Italy: Venice, Ferrara, and the Marches- Venetian art, an introduction
- Oil paint in Venice
- Devotional confraternities (scuole) in Renaissance Venice
- Palazzo Ducale
- Ca' d'Oro
- Aldo Manuzio (Aldus Manutius): inventor of the modern book
- Saving Venice
- Gentile Bellini, Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II
- Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini, Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria
- Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis
- Giovanni Bellini, Brera Pietà
- Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece
- Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece
- Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece
- Giovanni Bellini and Titian, The Feast of the Gods
- Andrea Mantegna, San Zeno Altarpiece
- Mantegna, Saint Sebastian
- Mantegna, Dormition of the Virgin
- Mantegna, Camera degli Sposi
- Mantegna, Dead Christ
- Pisanello, Leonello d’Este
- Sala dei Mesi at Palazzo Schifanoia
- Vittore Carpaccio, Miracle of the Relic of the Cross at the Rialto Bridge
- Persian carpets, a peacock, and a cucumber, understanding Crivelli's Annunciation
- Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation with Saint Emidius
- Do you speak Renaissance? Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and Child
- Cosmè Tura, Roverella Altarpiece
- Guido Mazzoni, Lamentation in Ferrara
- Guido Mazzoni and Renaissance Emotions
- Guido Mazzoni, Head of a Man
- Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara
- Renaissance Venice in the 1400s
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Persian carpets, a peacock, and a cucumber, understanding Crivelli's Annunciation
Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation with Saint Emidius, 1486, egg and oil on canvas, 207 x 146.7 cm (The National Gallery, London).
A conversation with Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris.
Want to join the conversation?
- I've another question. Is it my imagination, or has Crivelli even used linear perpective on the model of the city?(3 votes)
- From the author:Great observation. Next time I get to London I will have a look.(2 votes)
- AtDr Zucker states that " In a traditional Annunciation, we see the archangel Gabriel almost always on the left". Is this for religious reasons or is it simply a convention, as in artists being influenced by their predecessors? 1:12(1 vote)
- It appears to me to be a convention. After all, Latin and Greek script are read from left to right, so if the archangel is saying something to Mary, it "reads better" to have him (her, it... I'm not sure if angels even HAVE gender) approaching from that side. However, Aramaic (the language of Mary) reads from the right (as do Arabic and Hebrew). So maybe in paintings from those traditions, the archangel would be on the right. It would be an intriguing question from which to approach a Master's thesis, wouldn't it?(2 votes)
- If angel Gabriel is on the left then is that bad because angels should be on the right?(1 vote)
- How did a cucumber was included in an old religious painting .(1 vote)
- Mary was poor ,but why did the painting shows Mary kneeling on a Persian rug with lavish objects?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(jazzy piano music) - [Steven] We're in the
National Gallery in London, looking at a large
painting by Carlo Crivelli, who comes originally from Venice. - [Beth] He's associated with a region on the eastern coast of Italy,
known as the Marches. - [Steven] He's one of
my favorite artists. There's something incredibly compelling about his attention to
architecture, to material culture. - [Beth] The kind of hard-edged realism that makes everything almost pop out and move into our space,
but he's clearly a master of perspective, so we're
pulled in at the same time. - [Steven] The surface of this
canvas is almost bejeweled. It's so decorative. - [Beth] The ornament,
the jewels, the gold, even the bricks and the marble. He's clearly showing off
his skill as a painter, and in that way, making us aware of the incredible craftsmanship
of the art of painting. - [Steven] And it's so
focused on the particular that it takes a moment
to locate the subject, which in this case is an Annunciation. - [Beth] When the angel
Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear Christ,
that God will be made flesh, and she will be the mother of God. - [Steven] In a traditional Annunciation, we see the archangel Gabriel
almost always on the left, kneeling, having just landed. And we see here, Gabriel's
wings are still outstretched. To the right, we see the Virgin Mary, and she's inevitably
shown reading the bible. - [Beth] So we have a very typical Annunciation iconography here. The angel Gabriel raises his hand, greeting the Virgin Mary, in
his left hand he holds a lily, a symbol of Mary's virginity, her purity. On the right, the Virgin
Mary accepting the message of the angel Gabriel, her
hands folded in front of her, this expression of her humility. So all of that makes sense,
but we have a third figure. - [Steven] And I can't remember
another Annunciation scene where a third figure was
taking such an active role. - [Beth] This is St. Emidio,
the patron saint of Ascoli, and the convent that this
painting was made for is located in that city. He's attempting to engage Gabriel, and St. Emidio holds a model
of the city in his hands. - [Steven] This painting was a commission that was meant to commemorate
a very important event in the city's history. The city had been able to reach
an agreement with the pope, to cede to it a kind of
local political autonomy, which was enormously
important to the city. - [Beth] It was a kind of freedom under the protection of the pope, and we can see that clearly
in the bottom inscription, which says Libertas Ecclesiastica. - [Steven] This painting was commissioned to commemorate that freedom. - [Beth] And along the
top of the triumphal arch, we see a papal messenger
giving this document, that announces the freedom
of the city, to an official. A critical thing here, though, is that the people of the city received
this news from the pope on the holiday that
honored the Annunciation. - [Steven] And so there
was this clear connection in the minds of the townspeople
between the Annunciation and the freedom that they
had gained, and this painting is bringing those two things together. And in fact, every year
a procession was held to commemorate the
gaining of this freedom, and the procession would
end at this painting. - [Beth] We see also the life of the city. Some Franciscan monks, and
people, some rich, some poor. - [Steven] This painting
is filled with objects, and many of them have symbolic meaning. - [Beth] For example,
we see a bird in a cage. That's a goldfinch, a
symbol of Christ's death on the cross, his sacrifice for mankind. - [Steven] But there are also other birds. There's this incredible peacock. Look at the decorative quality
of the pattern of the tail. The peacock's a symbol of immortality, of the idea of the resurrection. - [Beth] That cucumber and
apple in the foreground. - [Steven] Well the apple
is easy enough to read. The apple is generally the fruit
from the tree of knowledge, the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate. - [Beth] So the apple
is about their fall from grace with God, and that refers back to the scene that we see before us, because it's Mary and
Christ who, in a way, fix that original sin
caused by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
by Christ's sacrifice. And the cucumber is filled with seeds. And because it's filled with seeds, it's a symbol of the
resurrection, of the idea of life after death, the
central miracle of Christianity. - [Steven] And we see the
golden light of heaven. It pierces the wall of the house, so that it can enter and make
its way to the Virgin Mary, and we see the white
dove, the Holy Spirit. But there is a kind of conflict here. The conflict between
the idea of the sacred and the wealth that's being
expressed in this painting. Mary, who we know was very poor, and yet, she's living in a house that
couldn't be more lavish. It's filled with expensive
objects, with gold. - [Beth] She kneels on a Persian carpet, there's another Persian
carpet in the loge above. We're reminded of the trading that was happening in this region. - [Steven] And so there
are two parts to this. One is that there were medieval traditions that understood Mary as
being of a royal lineage. But the other part of it is
that the worldly possessions are seen as a symbolic way
of representing her divinity. So in order to read this
painting, we need to understand not only the story of the Annunciation, but the traditions of
how that story is painted and we need to have some
specific understanding of the circumstances under which this particular painting was made. When we look at the extraordinary work of an artist like Crivelli,
I think it prompts us to think about why we
focus almost exclusively on painting made in Florence or Venice. And I think part of the problem is the way that art
history itself was written at the end of the 19th and
through the 20th century. And it does a disservice
to the more complex reality that existed in what we now call Italy. - [Beth] It's important
for us to see Italy as connected to the Adriatic Sea, and therefore to the Ottoman Empire. And Europe as an interconnected place, many artists who moved and served patrons in different places, the
way that Crivelli did, and to be able to therefore
really appreciate more work from the Renaissance than the
usual superstars that we see. (jazzy piano music)