Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Late in life (1460), the Dominican cardinal Juan de Torquemada (d. 1468) founded a confraternity of the Annunciation at the Roman church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The confraternity was to provide dowries for poor girls of good birth to marry honorably or enter a monastery. Otherwise they might fall into prostitution. The confraternity endured, receiving support from the papacy and setting an example for dowry confraternities founded in the sixteenth century. The confraternity's statutes survive, giving details on procedures and on the young women chosen for support. While girls without fathers were of particular interest, the need for local connections changed so that by the end of the fifteenth century daughters of artisans from outside of Rome received support. The confraternity publicized their activities with a "marriage" ceremony and liturgy on March 25 in which the girls received their dowries.

The painter Antoniazzo Romano (d. betw. 1508 and 1512) worked at the Minerva together with Melozzo da Forlì, subsequently painting a Virgin Annunciate, now located in the Annunciation Chapel of that church. The Virgin and the archangel Gabriel follow a familiar pattern, Mary turning away from a lectern with a prayer book to receive the angelic message. God the Father is shown above, sending the Spirit dove. The unusual feature is the presence of Torquemada in a Dominican habit with his cardinal’s hat leaning against him. He, in turn, is presenting three young women dressed in white, one of whom is receiving a bag of money from the Virgin. Two more money bags rest at the foot of Mary’s lectern. In one picture, Antoniazzo has captured the founding of the confraternity, its pious purpose and its heavenly patron.

Antoniazzo Romano was a leading painter in Rome in the second half of the fifteenth century. While using elements from the Roman school he also incorporated innovations from visiting artists in his commissioned paintings. For example, his use of three-dimensional representations and natural facial expressions may be traced to such Florentine artists in Rome as Perugino. Over time Antoniazzo set up a workshop, so that some commissions, especially frescos, attributed to him are actually the work of family members or apprentices. In the case of the Annunciation painting, Antoniazzo makes effective use both of tradition and innovation. The gold background is a medieval representation of the holy, while the central placement and strongly individualized portraits of the cardinal and the three girls gives new meaning to the standard representation of the Annunciation.