The Annunciation

This huge picture, almost four and a half metres tall, was paid for by a single nun. Sister Laura de' Pazzi, of the old banking family, lived at the convent of Santa Maria a Montedomini, and Allori painted it for her in 1577 and 1578. In January 1578 he stood surety for the carpenter making its woodwork and frame. The picture probably stayed inside the enclosure at first. After her death it moved into the convent church, where a guidebook writer saw it in 1677. Allori sets Gabriel's message in a well-kept room, with a red embroidered cushion on a seat behind the kneeling Mary and a basket of white linen at her feet. Above, small angels scatter flowers the museum has named one by one, lilies, jasmine, roses, lily of the valley, a red carnation and a tulip, a plant that had reached European gardens only a few decades earlier.