Virgilio Guidi

[1] Guidi received his early training at the Scuola Libera di Pittura in Rome and in 1908 began working as a restorer and decorator.

[2] He continued his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where Armando Spadini influenced him.

[1] He had few opportunities to view contemporary French art, and instead immersed himself in the study of artists of the Italian Renaissance such as Giotto, Piero della Francesca, and Correggio, and later masters such as Caravaggio.

[3] During the decade after the war, Guidi painted modern subject matter in a tonality influenced by the Venetians.

The composition is reminiscent of a traditional Annunciation, according to Jennifer Mundy, and "marks the end of Guidi's exploration of museum styles and is a confident statement of a new Renaissance-inspired realism in his art.