Lorenzo Veneziano
Annunciation Polyptych: Detail, the Annunciation

At the top of the panel the Father exhales the Holy Spirit, which is symbolized by a dove. The exhalation emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is indeed God's spiritus, "breath."

The Virgin Mary is here seated on something like a throne, a feature of many Annunciations in the first millenium and a few in the Middle Ages. In 16th-century Annunciations it is more common for Mary to place only one hand on her breast, but the crossed-arms gesture here is not unknown. It is fairly common in images of the Coronation of the Virgin.

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Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.