Bartolini Salimbeni Annunciation

By the early 1420s Florence was only a few years from a very different kind of painting. Masaccio was about to fill a nearby chapel with solid, weighty bodies standing in real space. This altarpiece belongs to the world just before that. Lorenzo Monaco was a monk of the Camaldolese order, and he made it near the end of his life, working in the delicate, gold-ground manner art historians call International Gothic. The Virgin and the angel meet under rounded arches that echo the shape of an older triptych. Look low, at the small predella scenes from the life of Mary, and you can read the style's signature: fine arabesques in the falling drapery, pale tones set against dark grounds. It was one of the last works he finished before he died.