Visitation

Fra Angelico's Visitation, painted around 1426 for the Museo del Prado, depicts the meeting between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. This scene from Luke's Gospel, when Elizabeth's unborn child leapt in recognition of the unborn Christ, was one of the most frequently depicted episodes of the Infancy narrative. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The two women meet in a landscape setting rendered with Fra Angelico's characteristic luminous color and precise spatial construction, the encounter painted with the tender devotional quality that distinguishes his treatment of Marian subjects.