In the foreground, against a dark background, is depicted the Virgin kneeling in front of a lectern covered with a cloth on which is placed an open book. Mary’s gesture seems to indicate her readiness to what the Archangel Gabriel is telling her who, in the upper register, holds a lily with one hand and points to the Holy Spirit with the other to indicate virginal conception.
Probably from the Messina school, the work is stylistically fragmentary with probable 18th-century remaking in the upper part. Significant is the presence of the spindle and wool, next to the kneeler, which seems to recall the tradition that the Virgin was intent on weaving the curtain of the Holy of Holies.
