Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena (The National Picture Gallery)
Location History:
Commissioned in 1344 for the Ufficio della Gabella, the tax and customs office of the Republic of Siena, the painting was initially located in the Consistory Hall of the Palazzo Pubblico, (Siena’s Town Hall) on the Piazza del Campo.
Created at a historical moment when art was beginning to wrestle with the reality of three-dimensional space, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Annunciation represents a artistic intersection of celestial miracle and architectural logic. Painted just four years before the Black Death would claim the artist's life, Annunciation is an exemplar of Sienese craftsmanship. Executed in egg tempera on a seasoned poplar panel, the surface is a radiant field of 22-karat gold leaf. Beneath the gold lies a hidden architecture: a layer of red bole (clay) and precise incisions in the gesso. As Norman Muller’s technical analysis proved, these incisions reveal Lorenzetti’s original intent, including the "double wings" of the Archangel Gabriel. One pair is folded, while the other remains extended, capturing the very micro-second of arrival— a cinematic use of paint to suggest the physics of flight and the sudden displacement of air.
Intriguingly, the painting’s most modern feature is its floor. Lorenzetti utilized a series of converging orthogonals to create a unified vanishing point, drawing the viewer’s eye into a deep, three-dimensional space. This was a radical departure from the "stacking" perspective of his contemporaries. The Virgin Mary sits within this space, her arms crossed in a gesture of humble acceptance (submissio), while the Latin inscription, originally reading "Non erit impossibile..." (Nothing shall be impossible), flows from the Angel’s mouth in a physical manifestation of the Divine Word.
Originally commissioned not for a cathedral but for the high-stakes environment of a state tax office, the painting reflects a 14th-century Siena where the Virgin Mary was the official 'Queen' and protector of the Republic. By placing this masterpiece in a room of financial transaction, the state was making a bold moral claim, bestowing upon it the role of a divine auditor. The tax officials performed their duties under the watchful gaze of the Madonna, hence echoing a sophisticated fusion of divine mystery and civic honesty. Today housed in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, Annunciation remains a paragon of the Sienese Trecento, where the expensive shimmer of Lapis Lazuli (ultramarine) meets the cold hard logic of geometry.
