St Luke Painting the Virgin

Giorgio Vasari's St Luke Painting the Virgin, executed in fresco in 1565 in the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, depicts the legendary origin of sacred portraiture: Saint Luke, patron of painters, painting the Virgin Mary from life. This subject carried special significance for Vasari as both a painter and the author of a work dedicated to the lives of artists. Luke's act of painting was understood as the foundation of the entire Christian portrait tradition, making it a subject of professional as well as devotional resonance. The Santissima Annunziata, Florence's pre-eminent Marian sanctuary, was an ideal location for such an image: the church's famous miraculous image of the Virgin was itself attributed to an angel's completion of an image begun by a painter — connecting Luke's legendary portrait to the specific Florentine cult of sacred image-making.

The fresco medium in the Santissima Annunziata required Vasari to match his work with the distinguished existing decorative context of one of Florence's most important churches. The composition integrates a painter at work — with easel, palette, and brushes — with the Virgin as both divine subject and human sitter, creating a self-reflexive image about the nature of sacred art-making itself.