Parri Spinelli's Lost Annunciation to the Virgin and Other Aretine Annunciations of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract

Painting in Arezzo has rarely been of much interest to art historians. The best-known native-born artists, Spinello Aretino and Vasari, made their reputations elsewhere, and the most celebrated monument in the city, the cycle of the True Cross in S. Francesco, is by a non-Aretine, Piero della Francesca. Despite the existence of a local school of painting since the activity of Margaritone in the thirteenth century, the fame of Arezzo has always been obscured by that of the nearest large cities, Florence and Siena. To be sure, few Aretine artists achieved the stature of their Florentine and Sienese contempories, but the contributions of local masters to the development of Italian art have often been significant. Among the most prominent artists from Arezzo is the son of Spinello Aretino, Parri Spinelli. Although Parri was the foremost painter in his native city during the fifteenth century, he has thus far received little attention from scholars.1