From 26 September 2025, Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella will present in its historic Florentine spaces Annunciation II, After Fra Angelico (2017), a monumental work by the renowned British artist David Hockney: a direct dialogue between one of the most important masters of contemporary art and Fra Angelico, the central figure of the major exhibition taking place simultaneously at Palazzo Strozzi and the Museum of San Marco.

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.

The work Annunciation II, After Fra Angelico – displayed in the sacristy frescoed by the Florentine Gothic artist Mariotto di Nardo at the historic headquarters in Via della Scala 16 in Florence—is a contemporary reinterpretation of the famous Annunciation frescoed by Fra Angelico around 1440 in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence. Within a large painting over 2 meters wide, Hockney applies his unique style to reimagine in reverse perspective a masterpiece such as Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, which he had known since childhood thanks to a poster hanging in the corridor of his elementary school. The result is both homage and challenge: a tribute to the Angelican subject while at the same time a break from Renaissance perspective conventions.