The Annunciation with Saints Anthony Abbot and John the Baptist

The Annunciation here is the familiar scene, the angel Gabriel kneeling before Mary with the news that she will bear Christ. Less usual is the company Lippi gives it. To either side stand two saints who have nothing to do with that morning in Nazareth, Anthony Abbot, the hermit of the Egyptian desert, and John the Baptist, the patron of Florence. They are present because whoever commissioned the panel wanted them there, keeping watch over the mystery across the centuries between. Lippi painted it around 1452, setting the meeting in a shallow, carefully measured space with a walled garden behind, the enclosed garden that old tradition read as a sign of Mary's purity.