The Annunciation

Inscription: Inscribed: (on banner) Ave gracia plena / dominus / tecum; (on halo) santa: mari[a]

Mrs. Lewis Cass (Isabel) Ledyard, New York (by 1950–d. 1955); her daughter, Muriel Stokes, New York (1955–d. 1958)

Huntington, N.Y. Heckscher Museum. "Treasure Hunting in a Painting," March 8–April 5, 1964, no catalogue?

New York. IBM Gallery. "The Christmas Story in Art," December 13, 1965–January 8, 1966, no. 29 (as by an unknown Spanish artist, XV century).

Chandler Rathfon Post. A History of Spanish Painting. Vol. 10, The Early Renaissance in Andalusia. Cambridge, Mass., 1950, pp. 338, 342, fig. 134, attributes this picture to the Budapest Master and suggests it once formed part of a retable with a Nativity and an Epiphany (formerly collection comte de Demandolx-Dedons, Marseilles); comments on the similar hairstyles of the Virgin in the three pictures as well as in a triptych of the Annunciation, Assumption and Last Supper by the Budapest Master (present location unknown; exhibited at the Galerie Heinemann, Munich, in 1911), noting that the MMA Annunciation "practically repeats the version in the Heinemann triptych in composition, types, and details".

Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño. La pintura española fuera de España. Madrid, 1958, p. 119, no. 424, attributes this picture to the Budapest Master and suggests it may have belonged to the same retable as five panels by this artist representing the Crucifixion, Betrayal, Deposition, and two episcopal saints (Budapest Museum of Fine Arts); further suggests that the Heinemann triptych was also part of this retable.

Marianne Haraszti-Takács. "Oeuvres de maîtres espagnols du XVe siècle en Hongrie." Bulletin du musée hongrois des beaux-arts 38 (1972), pp. 44–45, rejects association of this picture with the five panels by the Budapest Master [see Ref. Gaya Nuño 1958], stating that the latter depict the life of Christ and would not belong to a retable of the Virgin; does not see a stylistic connection with the Budapest Master, calling our "extremely fine and poetic" picture more in the Flemish tradition.

María Pilar Silva Maroto. Pintura hispanoflamenca Castellana: Burgos y Palencia, obras en tabla y sarga. Vol. 2, Valladolid, 1990, pp. 509, 622, no. 53, fig. 200, attributes this picture to the circle of the Castilian artist, the Master of los Balbases, and dates it about 1485–90.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 152, ill.