The Annunciation

Allori was in his late sixties when he painted this Annunciation, and a Latin inscription on it gives the year, 1603. In it he calls himself Alexander Bronzinus Allorius, still carrying the name of his teacher Bronzino more than 30 years after Bronzino's death. At 162 centimetres high, the canvas was made for private prayer in a room. Mary stands with both hands raised, looking more startled than devout, a pose close to the Annunciation that his fellow Florentine Santi di Tito painted for Santa Maria Novella. Beside her are a chair, an open book and a lace pillow hung with bobbins, the handiwork she has just set down. The earliest record of it is a 1799 inventory of the Medici villa at Castello. It reached the Florentine galleries in 1933 and went on show at the Accademia in 1936.