Madonna soon at auction – L’Express

In 1809, a handful of Germanic students at the Vienna Academy, opposed to the neoclassical aesthetic theorized by Winckelmann whose venerable institution claimed, founded the brotherhood of Saint-Luc. Among them, the German Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 20, searches in vain on his palette the “Christs” and the “Madones” which haunt his imagination. In search of noble ideal, he and his companions intend to regenerate painting by religion. Protestants, these admirers of the Italian primitives convert to Catholicism and settle in Rome in an abandoned monastery on the Monte Pincio, where they soon join other followers from Germanic countries. Their contemporaries renamed them “Nazarens”, in reference to Nazareth and the first Christians, mocking their monacal way of life: dressed in the manner of the biblical characters represented by the Perugin, Fra Angelico or Raphaël at his beginnings, they are called “brothers” between them, each living and working in a monk cell.

By restoring their letters of nobility to monumental painting, the Nazarens met with real success with the Roamine aristocracy. They are called to decorate the Palace of the Consul General of Prussia Jakob Salomon Bartholdy then the hunting pavilion of Prince Francesco Massimo. From 1818, most members of the band, whose notoriety crossed the borders, returned to Germany to take the direction of art schools, while Overbeck chose to stay on the shores of the Tiber. He painted in particular the two manifests of the brotherhood, Italia and Germania (1811-1929), now kept in Munich, and The triumph of religion in the artskept in Frankfurt.

A rare event

This is the case with Nazarean works, almost absent from the art market, since made on frescoes or fallen into the lap of museums from across the Rhine. This means that the discovery of The Annunciation And its sale on March 27 (at 2 p.m.) at Tajan, in Paris, is a rare event. Completed by Overbeck in 1820 and intended for the president of Rostock court, Friedrich fromm, the canvas had never left the family of her sponsor, in whom she was long kept alongside the side of Three Marie in the tomb by Peter von Cornelius, with whom she presents an obvious kinship.

So far, The Annunciation was known only by three graphic studies – a preparatory card, a drawing with black stone and a watercolor – which today allow to follow the long creative process of the author by tracking repentants and additions on the final table, which brilliantly combines Gothic and Renaissance elements, inspired by the masters of the boot (Giotto, Duccio) and the Flemish school (Van Eyck). The religious scene takes place there in the foreground, in a loggia closed by a colonnade decorated with Corinthian capitals. Overbeck paints a virgin in the tilted face, modeled on that of her Madonna in front of the wall from 1811, and an Archangel Gabriel carrying a branch of lilies, symbol of purity. In the sky, a discreet dove can be guessed above Joseph, represented as a gardener in the second plan. In the distance, a landscape of mountains of waters is bordered by medieval buildings. The whole forms a harmonious composition, crossed by a gentle, crystalline light, characteristic of the Quattrocento. It remains to be seen who will be the purchaser of this Annunciation Unpublished estimated between 100,000 and 150,000 euros.