Annunciation to Mary

Emperor Franz of Austria admired the Middle Ages. In the park at Laxenburg, the Habsburg summer residence south of Vienna, he laid out a make-believe knights' domain with a tournament ground and a castle, and among its buildings stood a small chapel in the old German style called the Rittergruft, the knights' vault. The Belvedere traces this panel back to that chapel. An unknown Upper Austrian painter made it around 1500, and the museum also holds three more panels from the same series, among them the Nativity and the Death of the Virgin. Gabriel sweeps in, wrapped in a billowing rose-coloured robe, holding a staff wound with a scroll that begins with the word Ave. Mary crosses her hands on her breast. A white dove glides over the gold, and lilies stand in a small vase lettered with her name.