The Annunciation

The Annunciation (1494), at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, was painted near the height of Lippi's powers, two years before his immense Adoration of the Magi for the Uffizi. The subject of Gabriel's announcement to Mary was one of the most painted in Christian history, and Lippi had to find a way to make the well-worn narrative fresh and devotionally meaningful. His Hermitage version is distinguished by its architectural setting — typically elaborate and classically inflected — which frames the sacred encounter within the vocabulary of the new Renaissance world that Humanist patronage had created.

Lippi's treatment of the Annunciation gives the architectural space as much attention as the figures themselves: columns, arches, and receding floors create a perspectival structure that both grounds the supernatural event in physical reality and gives it a ceremonial dignity. Gabriel's arrival is depicted at the moment of greeting rather than the instant of the Virgin's submission.