Annunciation with Saints

By 1371, Lorenzo Veneziano had been signing and dating altarpieces for about 15 years, and here he returned to the subject he had started with, the Annunciation. What sets this one apart is the company he gave it. Around the angel and the Virgin he placed a row of saints who rarely appear together: desert hermits of the early Church, Paul the Hermit and Macarius among them, men who had lived alone in the Egyptian wilderness, standing beside Mary Magdalene and Theodore, the soldier-saint who had been Venice's protector before Saint Mark. Such a precise gathering usually points to whoever ordered the work and the church it was meant for, though that patron is no longer recorded. The panels were once locked together as a single altarpiece. Today they hang separately in the Accademia.