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Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum — Madrid, Spain

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum — one private collection so vast it forms a second national museum, tracing European painting from the 1200s to the 1900s in a single visit.

Jan van Eyck's grisaille Annunciation diptych at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, showing the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary painted in gray tones to look like carved stone statues

The Annunciation Diptych

c. 1433-1435

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum · Second floor, Old Masters galleries

Look closer

Look for any real color — there isn't any. Van Eyck painted the Angel Gabriel and Mary entirely in shades of gray, tricking the eye into reading flat paint as carved stone statues standing in square-headed stone niches, each figure on an octagonal pedestal.

Gallery question

Jan van Eyck painted this Annunciation entirely in grays instead of color. What illusion was he creating?

Just a moment…