Malchiostro Annunciation

Titian painted this around 1520 for a private chapel just off the high altar of Treviso's cathedral, paid for by Broccardo Malchiostro, secretary to the local bishop, whose name the chapel still carries. What a visitor of the time would have noticed at once is how wrong-footed the scene feels. In most Annunciations the angel Gabriel strides in from the left and the Virgin turns to receive him. Here Titian reverses it: Mary stands close and full-face while Gabriel drops back along a shaft of light and shadow, as if the divine were breaking into the room from behind him. The young painter was already pulling the eye through depth rather than across the surface. High on the wall a small kneeling portrait of Malchiostro himself keeps watch.