The Annunciation

In 1623 Orazio Gentileschi, about 60 and working in Genoa, sent this large altarpiece to Turin as a present for Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy. A letter went with it. In it the painter makes plain that he knew how good the picture was, and that he hoped the gift would earn him a place at the Savoy court. The post never came, and the next year he left for Paris.

The subject was a careful choice. The highest honour the dukes could bestow was their own order of knighthood, the Order of the Annunciation, so this scene flattered the house it was sent to. Gentileschi also reused a face. The Virgin's lowered head comes from his Saint Cecilia playing the spinet, a picture now in the national gallery in Perugia, where the saint appears in a very similar attitude.