Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 13, 2024

The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, described in the Gospel of Luke. The iconography focuses on the Virgin's purity. Her swoon foreshadows the crucifixion of Jesus, and the painting emphasizes her role as mother, bride, and Queen of Heaven. The painting was executed in the 1480s. It was discovered in the early 19th century on an estate of the Radziwiłł family, in whose collection it might have been since the 16th century. It was purchased by the banker Philip Lehman in 1920, was transferred to canvas from its original oak panel sometime after 1928, and is today part of the Robert Lehman collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1847 the art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen described the panel as one of Memling's "finest and most original works".