The Bible in Pictures

An early work, painted when Leonardo was about twenty. The angel kneels in a garden; Mary sits at a marble reading desk in front of a house. Behind them the landscape dissolves into haze.

Leonardo painted the panel in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio; how much of it is by his own hand has been debated. Mary's right arm is too long for her to reach the book. It has been suggested that the picture was meant to be seen from the lower right, where the arm falls into place.

Between the cypresses a harbour and mountains dissolve in blue haze, the kind of distance Leonardo would paint all his life.

Between the cypresses a harbour and mountains dissolve in blue haze, the kind of distance Leonardo would paint all his life.

The marble desk is modelled on a tomb that Verrocchio made for the Medici in San Lorenzo.

The marble desk is modelled on a tomb that Verrocchio made for the Medici in San Lorenzo.