The Virgin and Child with Saints and the Annunciation

Giovanni di Paolo's Virgin and Child with Saints and the Annunciation, painted around 1428 for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is an early work that demonstrates his formation in the tradition of Taddeo di Bartolo and Gentile da Fabriano. Even in his youth, Giovanni di Paolo showed the inventive spirit that would make his mature work so distinctive. Giovanni di Paolo was among the most individual and poetic painters of fifteenth-century Siena, developing a highly personal style that combined the mystical intensity of the Sienese tradition with a love of decorative color and spatial fantasy quite unlike anything in contemporary Florentine painting.

The multi-part composition combines a central devotional image with an Annunciation scene, rendered in the bright colors and refined gold tooling characteristic of early Quattrocento Sienese panel painting.