The Annunciation

By the late 1590s El Greco had lived in Toledo for 20 years, and the city's monasteries and chapels kept him in near-constant work. This Annunciation belongs to that busy stretch, when he painted the same sacred scenes again and again for Spanish patrons. Look at what he does with an ordinary room. The Virgin's small sewing basket and the book fanning open on her prie-dieu are still there, but the space around them has filled with cloud and sudden light, so the everyday things seem to float loose from the floor. Gabriel arrives from above in that same charged air. The elongated bodies and cool, flickering colour are the manner Toledo had come to expect from him.