The Annunciation

The Annunciation, c. 1580. Paolo Veronese (Italian, 1528–1588), and Workshop. Oil on canvas; framed: 176 x 159.5 x 9.5 cm (69 5/16 x 62 13/16 x 3 3/4 in.); unframed: 150 x 133.4 cm (59 1/16 x 52 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Hanna Fund, 1950.251

Created in 1580 during the Renaissance period, this work belongs firmly within the daily life tradition. Paolo Veronese worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

The physical object — oil on canvas, Framed: 176 x 159.5 x 9.5 cm (69 5/16 x 62 13/16 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 150 x 133.4 cm (59 1/16 x 52 1/2 in.) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Paolo Veronese's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Baroque studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Scenes like this were prized precisely because they made ordinary labor and leisure worth painting at all.

Housed at Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, the painting has passed through the hands of collectors, dealers, and institutions before reaching public view — a provenance that is itself part of the object's story.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”