Ventura SALIMBENI (Siena 1568 - 1613) “l'Annunciazione” Original etching with centered retouching engraving, signed and dated in the lower left plate "Ventura Salimbeni Senensis Inventor Fecit Romae 1594". Beautiful specimen printed on a portion of thin laid paper on which there is no watermark, trimmed along the frame line, with some traces and residues of old gluing on the back as well as an old hand pen signature but overall in excellent general state of conservation. Of this engraving three states are known, characterized by the presence of the address of the publishers who have succeeded each other in the ownership of the slab, Bartsch indicates two, the first with the address according to some of the Roman publisher Cristoforo Stati or Dutch Johannes Statius transplanted to Rome, the second with that of Giovanni Orlandi, also Roman, dated 1598, the third state bears the address of Nicolas van Aelst, Roman by adoption, who died in the same year as Salimbeni. All of these publisher addresses are engraved in the part below the frame line, so it is impossible to place ours in one of the three given the lack of the white area. This is the last of the seven engravings made by Ventura Salimbeni, all located temporally during his Roman stay, and is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful. Bartsch notes that "Cette piece est une des plus rares de l'oeuvre de ce maitre". The Municipal Library of Siena has a magnificent drawing by Ventura where a half-length portrait of the Virgin in the exact pose in which it is found is associated and a small angel equal to the one on the top left, so as to suggest that it can be treated of a preparatory for this work. The figure of the announcing angel and that of the little angel resting on the central cloud are quite similar to those of the Annunciation in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Bibliography: Bartsch “Le Peintre-Graveur” Vienna 1818 vol.XVII page 192 n ° 4. Bellini F. in "The Art in Siena under the Medici" Rome 1980 pag.249-250 n ° 103. Ciampolini “Sienese painters of the seventeenth century” Siena 2010 vol.2 pag.727 and following. Nagler "Die Monogrammisten" Munich 1879 vol.V p. 78. (Statius) https://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/adatlap_eng/the_annunciation_ventura_q_class_8731 Measurements in mm: 291ca x 169ca