Nativity

religious

Baldovinetti's Annunciation is in the atrium of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. His interest in local landscape is evident in the Arno Valley view that he chose as the background of this fresco. In fact he painted only a few portions of the picture in true fresco, and then waited until the plaster had dried so that he could paint 'a secco.

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About the Artist

Alessio Baldovinetti

1425 – 1499

Florentine painter, mosaicist, and worker in stained glass. His training is unknown, but his graceful, and refined style shows the influence of Domenico Veneziano and Fra Angelico. His finest works include a damaged but still enchanting fresco of the Nativity (1460-62) in the forecourt of the SS. Annunziata, Florence, a Madonna and Child (c. 1460) in the Louvre, Paris, and an Annunciation (c. 1460) in the Uffizi, Florence. They show his remarkable sensitivity to light and landscape and his engaging blend of naivety and sophistication. In his History of Italian Renaissance Art (1970), Frederick Hartt writes that Baldovinetti was 'the finest painter in Florence ' in the 1460s, and considers him 'a very gifted master who somehow never quite seemed to fulfil his great initial promise'.

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