L'Annonciation

By 1757, when Pittoni painted this, Venice had long stopped being a great power but was still turning out some of the finest painting in Europe, and Pittoni was near the top of that world. He was among the founders of the city's new Academy of Fine Arts and would shortly become its president, taking over from the painter Piazzetta. His Annunciation is Venetian Rococo at ease, light and silvery, an angel sweeping in on a bank of cloud, Mary drawing back with a soft turn of drapery, the whole worked in the pale, sugared tones the century loved. The painting joined the Academy's own collection in 1807, after Napoleon's men suppressed the churches and convents that had held so much Venetian art.