The Annunciation

Archangel Gabriel tells Mary that she will soon become mother.

Artemisia Gentileschi turned the Annunciation into a nocturnal scene, in which a ray of heavenly light does enter. In the right foreground is a letter with the name of the artist and "F[acit]: 1630".

It was Gentileschi's first paid assignment, probably commissioned by the church of San Giorgio de' Genovesi, a Genoese church in Naples.

Art historian Mary D. Garrard compared the painting to the Annunciation Artemisia's father Orazio had made in 1622: "though it is more fully Baroque than Orazio's painting in its elimination of architectural setting, its heightened chiaroscuro and selective focus, Artemisia's Annunciation nevertheless lacks a dramatic intensity" (1989).