The Annunciation by de Champaigne, oil on wood, circa 1644. Philippe de Champaigne was one of the protagonists of French classicism. His art, inspired in part by his association with Jansenism (a severe Counter-Reformation movement suppressed by Louis XIV), has been described as combining "a scrupulous perfectionism verging on coldness with an inner life of deep intensity." This picture was painted for the private chapel of Queen Anne of Austria (1601-1666), the widowed wife of Louis XIII. The chapel, a small oval room in the Palais Royal, Paris, was decorated by the most prominent French painters of the day. The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God, marking his Incarnation.