The Annunciation

Giannicola di Paolo

National Gallery of Art

Two round, gold frames each show a person from the waist up in this nearly square painting. The rest of the panel is filled with vegetal and animal designs against a black background. A pair of nude winged angels are beneath each “framed” picture. All the people have pale skin and delicate features. The two people in the frames, Gabriel and Mary, have honey-brown hair and the pairs of angels below have short, blond hair. In the circular frame to our left, Gabriel looks to our right in profile. Plum-purple wings curve up and out from the shoulders. Gabriel wears a sage-green garment with harvest-yellow sleeves and a raspberry-pink robe. A stem of white lilies is held in one hand and the other gestures to Mary, to our right. Mary’s body is angled toward Gabriel, and she looks off to our left. She wears a garnet-red dress under a light blue robe, and her hands are together in prayer. A stone ledge runs behind both Gabriel and Mary, and a lectern holding a book sits on the ledge behind Mary. Behind both Mary and Gabriel, distant hills lead back to bodies of water that wind around rocks and buildings to hazy mountains along the horizons. A tiny gold crab perches on the top of the frame above Gabriel. Pelican-like birds and dragon-like creatures are surrounded by swirling vines and swags above and below the frames. The two pairs of angels take up the bottom third of the panel. The two angels in each pair mirror each other. The angels sit with their knees facing opposite directions, their knees crossed away from us, on altar-like structures. The left pair of angels have olive-green and mauve-pink wings, and the other pair have green and lavender-purple wings. All four have their eyes closed. Each altar is covered with a gold-edged, white scroll. All four angels rest one elbow on the rounded body of an urn sitting on the altars. The angels rest their chins in those hands, and each holds a scrolling vine with the other hand. The vines meet in the middle to support a flaming cauldron.