Giorgio Vasari

This study of the Annunciation is preparatory to a roundel in oil on panel, originally in the Capella S. Michele in the Torre Pia, Vatican Palace, now in the Móra Ferenc Museum, Szeged.¹ The roundel is one of four such paintings listed by Vasari’s Ricordanze as being included in the chapel.² In 1973, Edmund Pillsbury suggested that the Morgan drawing and another in the Louvre depicting the Nativity prepared two then-lost paintings for the Capella S. Michele, ca. 1571.³ As Florian Härb notes, the subsequent rediscovery of both roundels has proven this hypothesis correct.⁴ Pillsbury was the first to attribute a third related drawing illustrating the Liberation of St. Peter, now in the Musée d’Orléans.⁵ Härb then rediscovered the related painting, which he connected to the Orléans study.⁶

Footnotes:

1. Móra Ferenc Museum, Szeged, inv. 50.47.1.
2. No. c. 29v. The four roundels are listed as the Nativity, the Annunciation, Zacharias and the Angel and the Liberation of St. Peter (in quatro tondi grandi a olio, negli angoli vi era la nascita di Cristo, la Annunziata, Zacheria che amutulisce parlandoli l’angelo e San Pietro in prigione liberato per mano dello angelo). For the Ricordanze, see http://www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/vasari_ricordanze.pdf.
3. Louvre, Paris, inv. 2084; Pillsbury 1973, 173.
4. Härb 2015, 591-92.
5. Musée d’Orléans, Orléans, inv. 1680, album 1.111 (MS note on the mount, 1978); Härb 2015, 592.
6. Härb 2015, 591-92, no. 404.