The Annunciation

Filippino Lippi grew up inside the painting trade. His father was Fra Filippo Lippi, a Carmelite friar and one of the leading painters in Florence, and after his father died in 1469 the boy went on to train in the workshop of Sandro Botticelli. This Annunciation belongs to those early years, when he was still very young. It shows the familiar moment: the angel Gabriel arriving to tell Mary she will bear a son, the two figures held apart in a quiet, ordered space. The soft modelling of the faces and the clear even light already carry something of Botticelli's manner. Filippino would later complete the frescoes Masaccio left unfinished in the Brancacci Chapel, a job that came to him because he had learned to paint so close to the older masters.