Annunciation (detail)

The unusual pose that Lippi selected for his Mary Annunciate, with a strong twist of the body, has a parallel in Donatello's high relief Annunciation which the sculptor carved for the Cavalcanti Chapel in Santa Croce. In fact, the relationship of the standing Mary and the kneeling angel is the same in the two representations, although Lippi's style for representing faces is unmistakable and not related to Donatello's classicism of this period.