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Mérode Altarpiece (The Annunciation Triptych)
Workshop of Robert Campin · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Robert Campin (c. 1375–1444) and workshop
- Date
- c. 1427–1432
- Dimensions
- 64.5 x 63.2 cm (central panel)
- Medium
- Oil on oak
- Location
- The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
The Mérode Altarpiece is a small triptych made for private devotion. Its central panel sets the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel's message to the Virgin Mary, in a comfortable Flemish middle-class living room of the 15th century.
A closer look
Mary sits reading on the floor beside a bench, unaware of the angel, in a room full of everyday objects charged with symbolic meaning: a vase of lilies for purity, a just-extinguished candle, a hanging washbasin and towel. A tiny Christ child carrying a cross flies in through a window on rays of light. In the left wing the donors kneel at an open door; in the right, Joseph works in his carpenter's shop, making mousetraps, a symbol of Christ trapping the devil, while a street scene appears through the window.