The Santissima Annunziata (Most Holy Annunciation) is Florence's most venerated church, centred on a 14th-century painting of the Annunciation that was believed to have been completed miraculously by an angel. The image is kept in a richly decorated tabernacle in the antechurch, surrounded by votive offerings — silver ex-votos, wax figures, and paintings — that have accumulated over centuries of devotion.
The Chiostro dei Voti (the entrance cloister) is the main reason art historians visit: it contains frescoes by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, and Franciabigio, painted in the 1510s and 1520s. Del Sarto's Birth of the Virgin and Pontormo's Visitation are both here, among the finest works of their respective careers. The church itself is heavily Baroque in decoration, having been rebuilt and embellished from the late 16th century onward. The Servite friars who run it are still present, and the church retains the atmosphere of a working place of pilgrimage.