天使报喜

In the mid-1550s Paolo Caliari, a young painter from Verona whom everyone would soon call simply Veronese, was making his name in Venice with grand architecture and cool, clear color. This Annunciation is built like a stage set: Gabriel sweeps in from the left through a run of classical columns, Mary kneels at the right, and a long paved perspective opens between them toward a distant garden. The old story of the angel's visit is given the scale and marble of a Venetian palace. Some scholars have wondered whether Veronese's frequent collaborator Giovanni Battista Zelotti had a hand in it. A cardinal's agent bought the picture in Venice in 1654 and sent it to the Medici in Florence, where it hangs still.