The Annunciation to Zacharias; (verso) The Angel of the Annunciation

The Annunciation to Zacharias from 1457 by Giovanni di Paolo at the Metropolitan Museum depicts the angel announcing to the priest Zacharias that his wife Elizabeth will bear a son—the future John the Baptist. Giovanni di Paolo's visionary approach transforms the temple setting into a characteristically imaginative architectural space. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays brilliant, jewel-like color, gold grounds, lyrical figure types of Gothic grace, perspectival experiments that create strange compressed spaces, intense narrative invention.

The temple interior is rendered with Giovanni di Paolo's distinctive spatial invention, the angular figures and rich coloring creating a scene of otherworldly intensity within an architecturally inventive setting.