The Angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary in the companion painting that she will bear the son of God (Luke 1: 26-8). His words, ‘Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord be with you’, appear in Latin on the scroll. The text starts at the bottom of the scroll and winds its way up around the golden cross that he holds. Some of the words are not visible where the scroll turns away from us. Gabriel’s wings appear to have been studied from those of a real bird.
Originally a panel of God the Father blessing was displayed between the two panels. The stone parapet behind the Virgin and the Angel Gabriel continues across both pictures, as does the cloudy sky. The tops of the trees are just visible above the parapet suggesting that the Annunciation is taking place in an upstairs room or loggia. The low vanishing points of this scene and its companion suggest that these panels were intended to be placed very high up.
The two panels are related to four other panels by Gaudenzio Ferrari which are now in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin. The pictures came from a multi-panelled altarpiece (known as a polyptych) of six paintings arranged in two tiers painted in 1508–9 for the church of Sant’ Anna in Vercelli. It was commissioned by the local confraternity dedicated to Saint Anne for the altar of their oratory. The panels depict scenes from the life of the Virgin’s parents, Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, culminating in the Annunciation to the Virgin and the birth of Christ, who appears as an infant with his mother, grandmother and angels in the central panel.
The altarpiece was arranged as follows: main tier, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Angels (Turin) flanked by the Meeting of Joachim and Anne and the Expulsion of Joachim (both Turin); upper tier, God the Father (Turin) centrally placed above the Virgin and Child, flanked by the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary.
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