The Annunciation to Saint Anne

An angel with deep red wings speaks to a woman seated inside a small open-fronted house. She is Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, wrapped in a white veil and wimple, one hand pressed to her chest. Her story comes from the Gospel of James, a 2nd-century text that never entered the Bible. Childless after years of marriage, Anne sat under a laurel in her garden, saw a sparrow's nest in its branches and lamented that even the birds had young. Then an angel stood by her and said she would conceive. The painter, working around 1420 to 1425, dropped the garden, the tree and the nest, keeping only the doorway, the bench and her startled gesture. This was the outer face of an altar wing, the side people saw when the altar stood closed.