Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin

1670 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

religious

This painting with an uncommon subject and comparatively small scale probably was painted for a private Catholic patron. Van Hoogstraten had worked for foreign Catholics and like other Protestant players in the Netherlands he also had Dutch Catholic clients and was capable of meeting their demands sympathetically. The present picture, like some other painted for Catholic patrons, may be placed within the tradition of "Dutch Classicism," which was rising about 1670 (Gérard de Lairesse being a key representative).

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About the Artist

Samuel van Hoogstraten

1627 – 1678

Dutch painter and writer on art. He painted genre scenes in the style of de Hooch and Metsu, and portraits, but he is best known as a specialist in perspective effects. One of his "perspective boxes" which shows a painted toy world through a peep-hole, is in the National Gallery, London. Only in his early works can it be detected that he was a pupil of Rembrandt. Hoogstraten travelled to London, Vienna, and Rome, worked in Amsterdam and The Hague as well as his native Dordrecht, and was a man of many parts. He was an etcher, poet, director of the mint at Dordrecht, and art theorist. His Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Introduction to the Art of Painting, 1678) contains one of the rare contemporary appraisals of Rembrandt's work.

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