Annunciation

Most Annunciations give you two figures, the angel Gabriel on one side and Mary on the other. Here there is only Mary, half-length behind a small desk, one hand lifted as if she has just looked up from her book. That stripped-down idea came from Antonello da Messina, the Sicilian painter who brought oil technique to Venice in the 1470s, and it was startling in its quiet. Antonello de Saliba, his nephew, learned the family manner and repeated the composition faithfully around 1500. Scholars still weigh whether this exact panel is his hand or that of a de Saliba relative. What is not in doubt is the source of that calm, isolated Virgin, turning slightly in the light with the messenger left entirely to your imagination.