This subject obeys the traditional iconography of the Annunciation, and it must have been very successful, as Carducho repeated it frequently. The composition is clear, simple and balanced: with his precise technique, the painter situates the two main characters from left to right in the foreground, with the figures of God the Father, the Holy Ghost and two angels in the middle ground. The bright light that envelops them serves to divide the lower part into areas of light and shadows.

This composition is almost a literal repetition of one that Carducho made for the Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid in 1624, and it appears to be a later reduction of the canvas he painted for an altarpiece at the Monastery of la Encarnación, also in Madrid. That work, from 1616, has a broader composition based on an iconographic program dictated by the convent’s prioress, Mariana de San José.

The present work entered the Prado via the Museo de la Trinidad, after originally hanging in the lay brother’s choir loft at the El Paular charterhouse. It was paired with a Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (P4693), and both were mentioned there by Palomino and Ponz in the 18th century (Text drawn from Orihuela, M. in: Pintores del reinado de Felipe III, Museo del Prado, 1993, p. 50).