Verkündigung an Maria

Friedrich Herlin's Annunciation panel belongs to the altarpiece programme he executed for the church at Bopfingen or a related Swabian commission of the 1460s–70s. Herlin was the leading painter in Nördlingen and one of the most important transmitters of Flemish influence into the German southwest — he had direct knowledge of Rogier van der Weyden's work, probably acquired through Cologne. The Annunciation follows the Flemish convention established by Van Eyck and developed by Rogier: Mary at her prie-dieu, Gabriel entering from the left, the dove descending. Herlin grafts this iconographic programme onto a domestic Swabian interior type.

Herlin uses a mixed tempera-oil technique, with careful modelling of the angel's elaborate vestments and the folds of Mary's mantle in the Flemish descriptive manner. Gold grounds with punched toolwork provide the heavenly setting, while architectural details are rendered with illusionistic spatial recession unusual for South German painting of this decade.