You can’t appreciate this work without realizing that it’s basically bloody enormous – seriously, the damn thing is huge. Like, to get the picture, I literally had to go into another gallery and fiddle with my zoom to get everything into the frame, and I had to make sure I wasn’t going to interfere with anyone else in either gallery before I did it – which is a major feat, considering both galleries are always insanely busy. But I digress!
This is classic 18th century art masquerading as Baroque come Renaissance religious art. It’s trying to be everything at once and the result is actually a stunningly romanticized version of the Annunciation that actually works in a way that many of the Old Masters couldn’t quite get across – it’s a softer, cleaner, sanitized version of religion without all the hyperbole and the hellfire of the middle ages. And it works in a different way to the Renaissance works as well. There are clever nods to Italian aesthetics over the French hyperindulgences as well in the choices of fabrics portrayed as well as in the lack of abundance of precious metals and jewels, which would have been splayed about if the painting had been done by a French artist of the same period.