The Annunciation (B. 3)

The print is based on a lost work by Titian painted in 1536 and acquired by Emperor Charles V as a gift to his wife Isabella in 1537. Charles’s motto, Plus ultra, appears on banderoles at the top of the engraving. It may have been Caraglio’s last prints since he left Italy in 1539 to work for Sigismund I of Poland as a medallist and architect (B. Davis, Mannerist Prints - International Style in the Sixteenth Century, Los Angeles, 1988, p. 73).