The Annunciation
Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455) · c. 1426
Under a slender arcade, the angel bows to a Virgin who folds in on herself in acceptance, while at the left Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden — the fall and the remedy in one frame.
Why it matters
It joins the brand-new Renaissance toolkit — perspective, gold-edged light — to the gentleness of medieval prayer.
What to notice
Follow the story right to left: the expulsion from Eden leads, along a path of flowers, to the moment that undoes it.
Context
Painted for a convent near Florence; Angelico repeated the scene up the corridors of San Marco for his fellow friars.
About the artist
Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455). A Dominican friar who, his biographer said, never painted a Crucifixion without weeping — the new Renaissance space in the service of the old devotion.
Early Masters (c. 1300–1500): Before the Renaissance there was the icon: flat, golden, eternal. Then Giotto gave figures weight and grief, Masaccio gave them space, and painting began its long walk off the gold ground and into the world.
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