The Annunciation

Candid (or Candido) was born in Bruges and trained in Florence, where he began his career as a painter and designer of tapestries. In this grand altarpiece, the angel Gabriel along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit rush into Mary’s bedroom in a blaze of light and color as they announce that she will bear a child. The artist painted it for a small church or oratory in the country to the south of Florence soon before he left Italy for Munich, where he became court painter to the dukes of Bavaria.