L’Annunciazione di Ascoli a Venezia e Alvise Albrizzi

The contribution focuses on the collecting history and critical reception in the 1820s of Carlo Crivelli’s renowned "Annunciation with Saint Emidius", preserved today in the National Gallery in London. Thanks to unpublished archival documentation, it was possible to reconstruct that the Annunciation, from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, arrived in Venice, where in 1821 the Academy attempted to acquire it for its newly founded Picture Gallery. The institution thus demonstrated an early appreciation for Crivelli, despite the painter’s limited popularity at the time. However, the new owner, the art dealer Alvise Albrizzi, decided not to sell it. It was probably Albrizzi who, eventually, exported the altarpiece and sold it in London to the famous collector Edward Solly, with whom he had already entered into business in Berlin a few years earlier.