Annunciation,
tempera on panel, 54.5 x 35.4 cm, framed

The present work reveals an unusual combination of North European and Italian pictoral styles. The scene is set in a sumptuously decorated room, clearly inspired by Flemish prototypes in its meticulous rendering of details, for example the window seen in perspective, with half-closed shutters, the wooden-backed bench; its veining richly adorned with gold, and the Virgin, seated in a sort of choir stall in front of a lectern covered with a sumptuous golden drape. Her blue cloak, covering part of her head, has a hem rising in a sinuous, yet clearly ‘Gothic’ fashion, leaving in view her veiled hair, which is held in place by a ribbon decorated with pearls in the fashion of the court of Milan at the time of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza.

The angel, draped in a precious brocade robe and holding a long scroll in his hand, is depicted in a Ligurian and Provençal style, somewhere between Jacques Durandi and the early Giovanni Mazone, reflected in the typology of his face. The Virgin, on the other hand, is portrayed in more of a marked Lombard manner. An extremely interesting feature is a sort of ‘attic’ above the ceiling; seen in a perspective view of golden beams, with a frame of alternating black and white marble tiles (a typically Genoese motif). It supports an ‘antique-style’ gable, topped with a flamboyant Late Gothic crown.

Active in Liguria, the artist of this unusual painting was certainly linked in some way with the so-called ‘Master of the Monte Annunciation’; author of the altarpiece in the Santuario della Nostra Signora del Monte in Genoa and of the large altarpiece in the Santissima Annunziata in Pontremoli, which is currently attributed to the young Giovanni Mazone (see G. Zanelli, Per gli esordi genovesi di Giovanni Mazone, in: Prospettiva, 101, 2001, pp. 58-67). There is also a close similarity, in terms of the typology of the faces and the meticulous handling of paint, with the panel depicting Saint Martin and the beggar in the Cernuschi collection of Paris, signed 'JOHAN(N)IS DE MO(N)TE ORPHANO D(E) MEDIOLANO PINSIT' (see A. D. Floriani, in: G. Alegri/A. D. Floriani, La Pittura in Liguria. Il Quattrocento, Genoa 1991, pp. 235, 237, fig. 215). Datable to around 1460 it is the only certain work by Giovanni da Montorfano, a Lombard painter active in Liguria between 1455 and 1479. The possible Ligurian origin of this panel is further evinced by its obvious citation in the later Annunciation (around 1475) by Tommaso Biazaci (M. Calderia, in: Corti e Città. Arte del Quattrocento nelle Alpi Occidentali, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2006, pp. 412-13) on display in the Church of San Martino at Andagna, a village near Molino di Triora in Valle Argentina in Liguria.

The present painting appears to have originally been part of the side panel of a triptych. The recess for the iron support and the edge of the frame still remain on the back of the panel. The painting is bound by a raised edge with an arched, flamboyant form which would have originally supported a carved frame.