The Annunciation

Fra Angelico painted this Annunciation on the wall of a monk's cell in the convent of San Marco in Florence, around 1443. It is a fresco, painted directly onto wet plaster, and it was never meant to be seen by the public. It was meant to be seen by one Dominican friar, every morning, as he woke up. The Archangel Gabriel kneels at the left, his wings folded, his hands crossed on his chest. The Virgin Mary sits at the right on a low wooden bench, her hands folded in her lap, her head slightly bowed. They are under a simple loggia with classical columns, a Renaissance architrave, and a barrel vault. The space is spare: no furniture, no decoration, no clouds, no gold. The colors are pale: pink, rose, soft green, and a luminous white on the columns. Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar himself, born Guido di Pietro, and he lived at San Marco from 1436 until his death in 1455. He painted a fresco of the Annunciation in each of the upstairs cells, roughly 40 of them, as devotional images for the monks. This one, in the north corridor, is the largest and most refined. Cosimo de' Medici had funded the rebuilding of the convent by Michelozzo, and Fra Angelico's frescoes were part of that project. The fresco is Early Renaissance in its spatial construction. Fra Angelico used linear perspective to create the loggia, with a single vanishing point at the center of the architrave. The architecture is based on the work of Brunelleschi, who had recently completed the Pazzi Chapel. But the painting is medieval in its emotional restraint. Gabriel does not speak. Mary does not recoil. The moment is still, silent, and interior. Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982, and he is known in Italy as Beato Angelico, the blessed angelic one. Fresco, 230 by 321 centimeters, roughly 90 by 126 inches. Fra Angelico painted on wet plaster with pigments ground in water, a technique that bonds the color to the wall surface. The fresco has survived for nearly 600 years in the cell where it was painted. The colors have muted with age but the drawing remains crisp, especially in the columns and the architrave. The pale palette and quiet subject make this print work well in a bedroom, study, or meditation space. The horizontal format suits a wide wall space above a desk or a bed. A white frame keeps the painting's luminous architecture clear. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the figures and the perspective enough room to read. The fresco is in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, now a museum. It has been in situ since it was painted in the 1440s. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.