Verkündigung

Francesco di Giorgio painted his Annunciation during the period before his engineering commissions drew him away from Siena to serve Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino. The Annunciation was the most symbolically loaded subject in Florentine and Sienese painting — the moment of the Incarnation, when divine architecture (Gabriel's arrival) intersects with domestic architecture (Mary's chamber). Francesco, as an architect, gave unusual attention to the spatial logic of the room and the perspectival recession of the tiled floor.

The tiled floor's foreshortening reveals Francesco's architectural training — the orthogonals converge with precision that few painters of his Sienese contemporaries could match. Gabriel's gold-shot wings and Mary's deep blue mantle provide the primary chromatic drama against a pale stone interior.