The Annunciation (the Angel)

For most of its life this was not a picture on its own. The archangel Gabriel here once turned toward a Virgin on a matching panel, with God the Father floating over the Piazza San Marco between them, all three parts of a single work in the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, the office of the Venetian treasurers. The three parts were separated after 1808, in the years when Venice's old magistracies were being dissolved, and Gabriel has hung ever since apart from the Mary he was sent to address. He is shown arriving, caught in the act of delivering the message. What used to be one image is now three canvases in the same museum.