Annunciation Polyptych

This altarpiece was finished in 1357, less than ten years after the plague of 1348 had passed through Venice. It stood on the high altar of the church of Sant'Antonio di Castello, and it was paid for by a Venetian patrician named Domenico Lion. He did not simply commission it and step back. He had himself painted into it, a small kneeling figure among the saints gathered around the Annunciation, and his name was written into the inscription along the base. That inscription also carries the date, and that makes this the earliest firmly dated work we have from Lorenzo Veneziano — the fixed point the rest of his career is measured against. Behind the figures the ground is still solid gold, in the manner Venice had used for generations.