La Anunciación

Cima da Conegliano set the moment the angel Gabriel tells Mary she will bear Christ inside a room any wealthy Venetian of the 1490s would recognize, with a canopied bed, a reading lectern and a wicker chair. This was normal for the time. Painters brought scripture into the present so that ordinary viewers could stand inside it. Cima fills the space with careful, almost stubborn detail. Through the open shutters you can make out a cathedral and a fortress, and he even paints the panes of glass missing from the cathedral windows. On the lectern sits a fly, small enough to miss, put there on purpose as a sign of the sin and death that Christ's coming birth will undo. The painting later belonged to the Golitsyn family, Russian princes, before entering the Hermitage in 1886.