The Annunciation (detail)

religious

At the moment of the Annunciation, Mary is sitting in a small pavilion attached to a much larger and much grander building behind. The slender rib vaults, the two windows surmounted by clover-leaf tracery, and the rectangular paving mark the style as Gothic.

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About the Artist

Melchior Broederlam

Netherlandish painter, court painter to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, from 1387. Documents show that he was a busy and versatile artist, but his only surviving works are two wings from an altarpiece representing The Annunciation and Visitation and The Presentation and Flight into Egypt (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, 1394-9). They are among the first and finest examples of International Gothic, combining lavish decorative display with realistic touches that look forward to the later development of the Netherlandish School. The figure of St Joseph in The Flight into Egypt, for example, is represented as an authentic peasant.

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