The Annunciation

Artist: Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi  |  Medium: Tempera and gold on panel  |  Year: 1333  |  Location: Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi made this work in 1333, during the period of The Gothic Age. It is tempera and gold on panel, and it lives today in Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The period was one in which the gothic cathedral was built to be a sermon in stone and glass, and mary was its subject, and this work belongs to that tradition.

The subject is the Annunciation, the moment Heaven waited on the answer of a young girl. The angel has come with the message, and everything that follows in human history depends on what she says next.

The angel’s words run in gold through the air, and Mary draws back, pulling her cloak around her, alarmed. The call of God was not comfortable. She was troubled, and she still said yes.

What makes this work endure is not only its craft but what it asks of the person who stands before it. The tempera and gold on panel is the vehicle; the lesson is the destination. Mary is shown here not as an abstraction but as a person, and the person she is points always past herself toward her Son. That is the consistent grammar of Marian art across eighteen centuries: she is never the end of the gaze. She is the direction of it.

Take a moment with this image. Let it do what it was made to do. It was not made to be admired from a distance. It was made to be prayed before.

Pause before this image. Let it do what it was made to do. It was not made to be admired from a distance. It was made to be prayed before.