Art historian Penny Jolly suggests that in the mid to late 1420s Jan may have traveled to Italy at the behest of the Duke of Burgundy where, in Florence, he probably saw an iconic 14th century annunciation, and perhaps visited more contemporary annunciation scenes. The Florentine annunciations have a number of iconographic similarities to the Ghent panels, including Gabriel's multi-colored wings, the upside down writing, the treatment of light beams, and the separation between angel and virgin by a thin architectural feature. Some of these elements, particularly the spatial separation between the two figures, can be found in Lorenzo Monaco's "Bartolini Salimbeni Annunciation" in Santa Trinita, finished before his death in 1424, and one that Jan may have seen. In Monaco's painting the angel and Mary are separated by two small spaces, one external and one internal, similar to the city-scape and domestic lavabo panels in the Ghent annunciation.