Die Verkündigung

Zurbaran painted this Annunciation around 1639 as part of a large altarpiece for a Carthusian monastery at Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain. The Carthusians were among the strictest of monastic orders, living in near silence, and Zurbaran gave them a quiet picture to match. The angel Gabriel kneels before Mary in a plain room, the moment of the announcement held without crowd or commotion. His color does the work instead, deep and clear, with the strong light and heavy folds of cloth that mark his best religious painting. The altarpiece was later broken up and scattered, which is how a Spanish monastery's Annunciation came to hang in a museum in the French Alps.