• Author: Maestro della Madonna Straus
• Date: 1395 - 1400
• Collection: PAINTING
• Technique: Tempera and gold on wood panel
• Dimensions: 213x221 cm
• Inventory: Inv. 1890 n. 3146

The panel retains its original frame, with vault and architrave, and preserves three coats of arms along the lower edge. The emblem at the centre, still unidentified, is repeated at the top inside the canopy, while those on the right and left represent the families of the two patrons: Margherita di Cione Ridolfi and Baldinaccio del Verre. The work was originally located on the altar of the chapel of the leper colony in the Prato di Ognissanti in Florence.

The Annunciation is the work of a painter whose conventional name comes from a panel with the Virgin and Child (Houston, Museum of Fine Arts), formerly in the collection of Percy Straus, but who may be identified with the Florentine, Ambrogio di Baldese. Trained in the workshop of Agnolo Gaddi, an exponent of the great figurative tradition of Giotto’s style, the artist achieved results of great originality and formal elegance and influenced painters like Lorenzo Monaco and Starnina, and he was characterised above all by a delicate chromatic range, described as ‘all milk and roses’.

In this altarpiece, the sculptural clarity of the two subjects and the clear architectural definition of the loggia combine with a light palette, rich in iridescent hues, aristocratic facial features, and a profusion of decorative elements in the garments and furnishings, demonstrating the painter’s ability to convey the values of 14th century Florentine painting through the new late Gothic sensibility. Finally, note the sophisticated expedient of the inlaid decoration that covers the walls of the loggia, which is repeated on the frame of the protruding canopy, with the aim of projecting the painted space into the observer’s reality.