Annunciazione

Lorenzo di Credi learned to paint in one of the busiest workshops in Florence, that of Andrea del Verrocchio, where one of his fellow apprentices was the young Leonardo da Vinci. You can see that schooling in this small, carefully finished Annunciation, the clear light and the tidy perspective of the tiled floor running back to a distant garden. Along the base runs a strip of three little scenes painted to look like carved stone, taken from the book of Genesis, the creation of Eve, the temptation, and the expulsion from Eden. They are there on purpose. The story of how humanity fell sits directly beneath the angel's greeting to Mary, the moment when, in this telling, the repair was thought to begin. It hangs today in the Uffizi.