Exceptional Works #2

In this new format we look forward to presenting exceptional works on a reoccurring basis. For the second edition we are delighted to present a Baroque masterpiece from a private collection.

#2: FRANZ Anton Maulbertsch, Annunciation, 1767-1772

Authentic Works by this ingenious artist, whose art historical rediscovery  only began in the 20th century, are of the utmost rarity on the art market today. Otto von Benesch viewed this visionary artist as a forerunner of the age of Expressionism.* Oskar Kokoschka vividly pointed out his startling visual experience in the Piarist Church in Vienna. He stated that Maulbertsch led him as a painter on the right path... that everything is born of light...his inner fire of colours reminded him of the genius of Mozart...**
According to family records, our oil sketch for an altarpiece comes from noble property in Györ-Raab, Hungary, it was then passed into the family of Viktor Freiherr von Fuchs (1840-1921) in Hall in Tyrol and went in succession to Gertrude von Kathrein. She married Lorenz Eitner (1919-2009) in 1946 and took the painting to America. Lorenz Eitner had emigrated to South Carolina in 1935, participated in the Nuremberg Trials as a researcher in 1945 and met Gertrude "Trudi" in Austria. From 1963 on he taught European art history at Stanford University and established the Stanford Art Museum. His publications on Theodore Gericault are still authoritative today.
In 1978 our Annunciation was shown for the first time in America at the Smart Museum of Art of the University of Chicago in the exhibition German and Austrian Paintings of the Eighteenth Century,curated by Edward E. Maser. In 1975, Otto von Lutterotti had already published the painting in the Festschrift for Nikolaus Grass. In his detailed essay Ein neu entdeckttes Verkündigungsbild des Johann Anton Maulbertsch, he connects our sketch to the altarpiece from the palace chapel in Thürnthal, 1767, (now in the Österreichische Galerie, Vienna) and to a ceiling fresco in the Györ-Raab Cathedral, 1772. Clara Garas, in a letter from 1976, congratulates Lutterotti on his discovery and refers to a photograph of another closely related Annunciation altarpiece.
Monika Dachs, Vienna, and Thomas da Costa Kaufmann, Princeton, agree with Lutterotti's assumption and his dating between 1767-1772.
 

*Exh. Cat.: Franz Anton Maulbertsch und die Kunst des österreichischen Barock im Jahrhundert Mozarts, Albertina 1956, Vorwort von Otto Benesch, p. 5. 
**Oskar Kokoschka, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Vorrede zum Buch von Klara Garas, 1960, in: Oskar Kokoschka, Das schriftliche Werk, 1975, p. 133, 139.