Annunciation

Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation, painted around 1472 and now in the Uffizi, Florence, is one of his earliest independent works, created while he was still connected to Verrocchio's workshop. The painting shows the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary in an elegant garden with a detailed landscape receding to distant blue mountains. Despite some anatomical awkwardness in the Virgin's right arm (suggesting youthful inexperience), the work already reveals Leonardo's extraordinary atmospheric vision and botanical precision.

The early Leonardo demonstrates his emerging mastery of atmospheric perspective in the distant landscape, precise botanical detail in the garden flowers, and the sfumato modeling that would become his signature, though some passages reveal the hand of a young artist still developing his skills.