Da Vinci's The Annunciation — Hand-Painted Oil Reproduction

Public-domain scan of the original shown for reference. Your canvas is hand-painted to order and photographed for your approval before shipping.

Reference image: Leonardo da Vinci - Annunciazione - Google Art Project.jpg — Leonardo da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. Your canvas is hand-painted to order.

Price by canvas size

Every The Annunciation we paint is made to order, so the price tracks the canvas size and the amount of brushwork involved. These are the sizes our customers order most:

Estimates only — the final quote depends on your exact size, frame and shipping destination. Framing and shipping are quoted separately. Duties and import taxes are the buyer's responsibility (DAP).

Why the distance is the whole painting

Leonardo invented the aerial perspective this canvas depends on: the garden wall, the harbour town, the mountains, each painted in successively bluer, thinner veils until the farthest ridge is barely a breath above the horizon. Painted in single flat passes, that depth collapses and the garden sits like a stage set.

Our painters build the distance in the original order — warm ground, then the blue veils one by one, each drier than the last — so the landscape genuinely recedes. The marble lectern, modelled on a Verrocchio tomb design, is another test: its crisp Gothic carving needs real brush control or it turns into grey mush.

There is a test we encourage buyers to use on any "oil painting" they are offered: run a fingernail very gently across the surface. A hand-painted canvas feels like terrain. A print feels like glass.

The painting itself

It was painted when Leonardo was barely twenty, most likely with contributions from Verrocchio's studio, and some details — the angel's wing, famously — were later altered and only restored to Leonardo's design in the twentieth century. Mary reads in a walled Renaissance garden while Gabriel kneels on flower-strewn grass with a lily.

The original is 98 × 217 cm, one of the widest Early Renaissance altarpieces, which makes it a natural fit for long walls. We most often paint it at 60 × 130 cm or 90 × 200 cm, keeping the wide proportion — narrowing it would destroy the calm the composition is built on.

How our painters reproduce it

Our studio is in Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen — the centre of hand-painted oil reproduction for more than thirty years. A The Annunciation here is not traced, projected or transferred. The painter works freehand from a high-resolution reference, in layers:

1. Composition and ground. The canvas is toned and the main forms laid out in a thin underpainting, matching the original proportions to your chosen size.
2. Colour build-up. The palette is mixed in oil, not acrylic — only oil gives the same depth, slow blending and the slightly translucent glow the original depends on.
3. Impasto and surface passes. The signature strokes go on last, loaded with paint, following the direction of the original's brushwork. This is the slowest and most skilful stage.
4. Drying and inspection. Layered oil needs days to set properly. We let it. Then the finished canvas is checked against the reference for colour, composition and stroke character.

Where it hangs best

A wide, quiet garden, a marble lectern, and the earliest mature Leonardo the world still owns. Rooms our customers choose most often:

• Living room — above a long sofa or sideboard, where the width belongs
• Dining room — the wide, low proportion suits a credenza wall
• Study or library — quiet subject, deep landscape
• Hospitality — hotel lounges and suites that want Renaissance calm

Framing

Choose gold to echo the original's warmth, matte black for a contemporary room, walnut for a traditional interior, or no frame at all as a gallery-wrap canvas ready to hang. Frames are quoted separately and packed with corner protection.

How ordering works

1. Tell us the painting, size and frame. WhatsApp is fastest — include a wall photo if you want sizing advice.
2. Get an exact quote. Usually within the hour, with the timeline confirmed in writing.
3. 70% deposit starts the painting. Paid by bank transfer, PayPal, credit card or Wise.
4. We send photographs of the finished painting. You review it before anything ships. If something clearly does not match your order notes, tell us and we adjust it.
5. Pay the 30% balance, then we ship. Tracked worldwide courier, rolled in a rigid tube or crated if framed.

FAQ