The Visitation (Ghirlandaio)

The pregnant Virgin meets her older cousin Elizabeth, herself carrying the future John the Baptist, who sinks down and clasps Mary in recognition (Luke 1:39-56); two women named in gold labels look on. Ghirlandaio sets the encounter on a terrace before a luminous river city, the two pregnancies - Christ and his herald - quietly joined. The color is sumptuous and clear, Mary's deep blue against Elizabeth's gold. Dated 1491 on the pier at right, it shows the assured, portrait-rich classicism that made Ghirlandaio's workshop the busiest in Florence - the very shop where a boy named Michelangelo would serve his apprenticeship.