This circa 1665 painting of the Annunciation by the relatively obscure Dutch genre painter Godfried Schalcken (1643 - 1706) gets something exactly right, that almost all other artists - including many far more famous than Schalcken - get wrong. Can you see what it is? 1/
Here is Godfried Schalcken's version vs El Greco's..... 2/
And here is his version vs Titian's. Can you see the key difference yet? 3/
Here's the answer... 4/
Only in Schalcken's painting is the Virgin reading from a SCROLL, which would have been the correct book format at the time. The codex-form book shown in El Greco's and Titian's paintings didn't come into widespread use until at least two centuries later, from around AD 200. 5/
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.