The Annunciation

Loreto, near the Adriatic coast of the Marche, grew up around a house. By a tradition that took shape in the late Middle Ages, the small room inside its basilica is the house of Nazareth where the angel Gabriel greeted Mary, carried across the sea by angels. To paint an Annunciation for Loreto was to paint the event in the place where pilgrims believed it had happened.

In 1582 Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, ordered this canvas for his family's chapel in that basilica, and it was installed in 1584. Barocci kept the scene plain and close. Gabriel kneels before Mary, and in the foreground a cat lies asleep on a stool. Through the opening behind them he painted a view his patron would have recognised at once, the Ducal Palace of Urbino.

Around 1585 Barocci made an etching of the same composition, one of only four prints he ever made, and it carried the picture far beyond Loreto. The canvas itself was taken to Paris in 1797, returned to Italy in 1815, and then came to the Vatican picture gallery.