Annunciation

Around 1650, when this was painted, Venetian taste still leaned toward solid, sculptural figures and deep, saturated colour. Mazzoni offered something else: an Annunciation where the paint seems to move and the tones dissolve into a bright, restless air. The angel leans in over Mary, who bows her head and accepts the message quietly, the two of them set against a stretch of plain architecture. The airy, dancing colour that his contemporaries found strange is close to what the next century would prize, when the light-filled Venetian painting of the 1700s made this kind of handling ordinary. He built the surface in quick, broken touches rather than a smooth finish. It is a tall, narrow canvas, a little over two metres high, and the two figures nearly fill it.