Following is a Serbian Orthodox icon of the Annunciation to Mary from the 14th century (found in the Church of Theotokos the Perivleptos, Ohrid, today in the National Museum of Serbia).

Orthodox Icons are not drawings or creations of imagination. They are in fact writings of things not of this world. Icons can represent our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. They can also represent the Holy Trinity, Angels, the Heavenly hosts, and even events. Orthodox icons, unlike Western pictures, change the perspective and form of the image so that it is not naturalistic. This is done so that we can look beyond appearances of the world, and instead look to the spiritual truth of the holy person or event. (Source )

Tibbs (2025, p. 51ff.) writes about the annunciation icon: “The archangel is seen entering from the left, moving toward the right, which is the typical direction of narrative action in icons. One reason for this is that the icon is read similarly to the Greek text in the New Testament, from left to right.

“The are no walls in the icon to suggest that Gabriel had entered an indoor space, as would have been presser in naturalistic art. The absence of enclosing walls in iconography is also intentional since the icon has no dimension or physical boundaries. There is no light source, and therefore, there are no shadows. The absence of both walls and light sources serves to convey that the event itself expands beyond its natural earthbound limits. Evdokimov writes that the icon is ‘never a window on nature,’ not even on a specific place, ‘but rather an opening onto the beyond.’

“It is the red drape that sets the scriptural event within its actual indoor historical setting, with the color red representing the earthly setting of this event. The red drape affirms that this event took place at a specific moment in history, in a specific indoor space in Nazareth, between a specific angel, Gabriel, and a specific young woman, Mary, in the ‘sixth month’ after Elizabeth conceived (Luke 1:26-27, 36). Yet the icon goes beyond the historical setting to encompass the cosmic significance of this event: the eternal God enters human history.”