National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Three Centuries of Italian Art

This religious drama typifies the arrival of Mannerism in Venice with its heightened colour and uninhibited figures in action. The Virgin and her cousin Elizabeth, soon to become the mother of John the Baptist, are both pregnant. Joseph and Zaccariah observe their embrace. Tntoretto wrote on his wall ‘The drawing of Michelangelo and the colouring of Titian’.