The Annunciation

Venetians liked to say their city was born on the feast of the Annunciation. Tradition placed the founding of Venice on 25 March in the year 421, the same spring day the Church marks the angel's visit to Mary, so the Annunciation was quietly the city's own birthday. That helps explain why this Virgin, receiving the angel's news, once hung in the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, the account-office of the Republic's treasurers. She formed one wing of a set, with God the Father above the Piazza San Marco in the centre and the archangel Gabriel on the opposite side. Painted around 1540, it placed the scene of the city's own beginning in front of the men who kept Venice's money.