Botticelli’s Annunciation Goes On Show In Jerusalem

Annunciation of San Martino alla Scala, 1481, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece ‘The Annunciation of San Martino alla Scala’ is to go on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The work is on loan from Florence’s Uffizi Gallery and will be exhibited in Israel from 17 September 2013 for four months until January 10, 2014. The loan celebrates the launch of the Italy-Israel Foundation for Culture and the Arts, and marks the 65th anniversary of Israel’s independence. It is the first Botticelli ever to be exhibited at the Israel Museum, inaugurating a project that will bring to the IMJ four Italian masterworks by Renaissance and Baroques painters over the coming two years. The large Botticelli mural dates to 1481 and was originally located in Florence’s Ospedale di San Martino della Scala, which was first a hospital and later a church. In 1920, the painting was removed for restoration. The fresco shows the archangel Gabriel on the left, with his clothes billowing in the wind holding a lily also bent by the wind. Opposite, the Virgin Mary kneels in an air of prayerful acceptance and humility. The artist used an exaggerated perspective to accentuate the emotion of the moment and perhaps presage the events to come.