I love this painting of the Annunciation and Visitation for the joyfulness it carries. Not only in the bold colors but also in the comportment of Our Lady and Saint Isabel (Elizabeth).

What’s really cool about this painting is that it’s the outside of the doors of a retablo that opened above an altar.

Inside you would see the following:

This latter gives a good idea of the scale of the piece. It is in a museum, but I have not found the history of it, for which Church it was originally built and so on. It would have been quite dramatic above an altar, and candlelit.

Someone once pointed out, and it stuck with me, that traditional European sacred art was intended to be viewed in light filtered through stained glass and candlelight. And so when it is displayed in electric light, especially very bright light, you do not have the same experience. Especially in regards to candlelight, which tends to flicker and move, which makes for a certain ‘living, breathing’ quality to the images.