The Annunciation
Fra Angelico (about 1395 to 1455) · 1425 to 1428
Under a loggia of slender pink columns the angel Gabriel kneels before the Virgin Mary, who bows her head and folds her arms over the book she was reading. From the top left a ray of gold light carries a dove towards her. Beyond the arcade, in a garden of flowers, Adam and Eve are being driven out of Paradise by another angel, their faces bowed in shame. The two stories are set side by side: the sin that closed the gate, and the moment that opens it again. Below, five small panels tell the life of the Virgin from her birth to her death.
Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar in Florence, and this is one of his first large works, painted for his own convent at Fiesole. Look at the gold: the angel's wings are painted feather by feather in rose and gold, and the ray of light is real gold leaf. The architecture is drawn in the new perspective of the early Renaissance, with the vault receding in a way that Masaccio and Brunelleschi had only just made possible, yet the figures still have the gentle, weightless grace of Gothic painting. The Virgin's blue robe was ground from lapis lazuli, the most expensive pigment there was. The plants in the garden are painted one by one.
The friars of Fiesole sold the altarpiece in 1611 to raise money for a bell tower, and it passed to the Duke of Lerma, favourite of Philip the Third, who gave it to a convent in Valladolid. It came to the Prado in 1861. A full conservation in 2019 removed old varnish and revealed the original bright colours and the delicate landscape behind Adam and Eve. It is the most important Fra Angelico outside Italy and one of the calmest pictures in the museum.
Did You Know? The friars of Fiesole sold the altarpiece in 1611 to raise money for a new bell tower, which is how a Florentine convent picture ended up in Madrid.
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