L'Annunciazione

By the late 1590s the painter everyone called El Greco, the Greek, had been settled in Toledo for two decades, a Cretan-born, Venice- and Rome-trained outsider who had found in Spain the freedom to paint as strangely as he liked. Around 1596 he won a major altarpiece commission for a Madrid church, and this small, intense Annunciation is one of the versions tied to that project. The angel Gabriel breaks in on the Virgin in a burst of light, the figures stretched and flickering like flames. El Greco returned to this scene many times. Some 20 versions are known from his hand and workshop. This one he painted almost entirely in a single sitting, wet into wet, trusting his hand completely.