Paolo Veronese’s Annunciations

Paolo Caliari (1528-88), known as Veronese, painted more than a dozen Annunciations, a number far greater than that of other Venetian artists of his time based on the extant Venetian works focusing on this theme. His rendition of Mary as woman of wisdom possessing serene monumentality, combined with his lavish Venetian settings made him the preferred artist for renditions of the scene in the last decades of the sixteenth century. The Uffizi’s painting, Annunciation to the Virgin, is the earliest of Veronese’s Annunciation works.