This is Laurence Kanter. I'm Chief Curator and Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery.
This is an Annunciation by Neroccio de' Landi, one of the last great painters of the Sienese School, and this is one of the great paintings by Neroccio in any public collection. It was originally the top part of a large altarpiece.
It shows the moment at which the angel delivers the message to the Virgin Mary that she will become the mother of God. She is shown just looking up from her reading. You see the book clasped in her hands. She looks modestly down toward her feet to receive the message, which is written on the scroll held by the angel: \"AVE GRATIA PLENA\" (Hail Mary, full of grace). She's enthroned because she is the queen of heaven. The scene takes place outside of her bedroom, and behind her is a wall leading out onto a garden with a single door in it, which is an emblem of the Virgin's virginity.
One of the interesting things about the Sienese School is that even though this painting dates from about 1480—which is to say, almost the same time as the Pollaiuolo in the other room or any of the great Florentine exercises in perspective attempts to create a believable space—the Sienese used all the same tricks without any concern, whatsoever, to create a space that's believable. It's all for decorative effect and pattern. If you measure the size of the bed by the size of the floor tiles that it covers, for example, and move that over to the angel on the left, you'd see that the angel would need to be twelve to fifteen feet tall, or the bed three to four feet long—one or the other. There's no way to explain how the Virgin looks totally unbelievable. If she stood up, for example, you'd see that her head is perhaps one-twelfth or one-fifteenth of her body size, whereas it ought to be closer to one-eighteenth or -nineteenth. These patterns follow the rules of perspective, but they don't play the game. They don't create the effect that the Florentines intended. The Sienese were not scrupulous about trying to be realistic. They were scrupulous about trying to convey a story in the most evocative way possible. So here you see the most elegant possible figure of the Virgin, who is the queen of heaven.