The Annunciation: The Virgin Mary

This narrow panel and its neighbour, the angel Gabriel, were once the outer wings of a small altarpiece, painted around 1513. Outer wings were what people saw when the altar stood closed, and only then did the two halves meet as one scene. The floor tiles run back into depth across both panels, so Mary and the angel share a single room even with a frame between them. Mary sits at a lectern and has looked up from her book, interrupted mid-reading by the visit. Above her the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers, the sign of the message the angel has come to bring, that she will bear a son. Whatever the altar held inside, behind these wings, has not survived.