On the occasion of the exhibition Fra Angelico at Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco, Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella presents in its historic spaces in Florence Annunciation II, After Fra Angelico, a monumental work by the celebrated British artist David Hockney.
The work Annunciation II, After Fra Angelico (2017)—displayed in the sacristy frescoed by the Florentine Gothic artist Mariotto di Nardo at the historic site of Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella in Florence—is a contemporary reinterpretation of the famous Annunciation frescoed by Fra Angelico around 1440 in the Dominican convent of San Marco. Within a large painting more than two metres wide, the English artist applies his distinctive style to reimagine, in reverse perspective, one of Fra Angelico’s masterpieces—a work Hockney first encountered as a child through a poster that hung in the corridor of his primary school. The result is both homage and challenge: a tribute to Fra Angelico’s vision and, at the same time, a departure from the perspectival conventions of the Renaissance.
The exhibition Annunciation II, After Fra Angelico by David Hockney at Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella (Via della Scala 16, Florence) is open free of charge every day from 26 September 2025 to 25 January 2026, from 9.30 am. to 8.00 pm.
The project is jointly produced by gres art 671 and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi.
David Hockney (Bradford, UK, 1937) is regarded as one of the greatest living artists, a leading figure on the international scene from the 1960s to the present day. Painter, draftsman, and tireless experimenter, he has renewed the figurative language with works ranging from Pop Art to his most recent digital explorations.
Cover: Annunciation II, after Fra Angelico (det.) from The Brass Tacks Triptych, 2017. © David Hockney. Loan courtesy of the artist
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