This extraordinarily rare painting is by the Master of the Spinola Annunciation, an artist working in the visual idiom of Giotto, who adopted the latter's use of spatial clarity to convey narrative complexity. The panel originally formed part of a pictorial ensemble that included similarly-sized works depicting the Annunciation (fig. 1; formerly in the collection of the Genoese Spinola family, from where the artist’s appellation derives), Crucifixion (fig. 2), and Lamentation (fig. 3). Together the panels most likely comprised a double-sided diptych or a laterally arranged quadriptych.¹ The format has yet to be fully resolved, but this panel originally backed the Crucifixion.

This composition, divided into three horizontal registers, abounds with anecdotal detail. At bottom, Joseph, appearing pensive with his head resting on his hand, sits cross-legged while a flock of sheep and goats graze at right. At center, the Madonna, outstretched on an expanse of embroidered red fabric, reaches toward the swaddled Christ, who lies in a simple wooden manger. An angel, an ox, and a horse survey the scene as two shepherds approach from the composition’s right. In the upper tier, above the straw-thatched manger are three angels: one, with hands clasped in prayer, raises her head skyward, while the other two appear to be engaged in conversation, as if attempting to comprehend the miraculous birth of the Son of God they have just witnessed.

The painting's attribution has changed over time with numerous experts advancing different artists. Roger Fry and Bernard Berenson initially ascribed it to Giotto, or an immediate follower. Richard Offner, in a 1937 lecture in Padua, connected the work with Pacino di Bonaguida.² Roberto Longhi later considered the Nativity an early work by Stefano Fiorentino, an artist later identified as Puccio Capanna by Pietro Scarpellini (later dubbed "Pseudo-Puccio Capanna" by Carlo Volpe³), and Miklós Boskovits associated the panel with an artist close to Jacopo del Casentino. Scholars including Gaudenz Freuler, Victor Schmidt, and Carl Strehlke, now agree on an attribution to the Master of the Spinola Annunciation, following Luciano Bellosi’s initial proposal. Bellosi also first established the artist's oeuvre, which, in addition to the present devotional series, also comprises a Madonna and Child (Vatican, Pinacoteca Vaticana, inv. no. 176 (46)).

While the present work's attribution has been debated, its exceptionally high quality has never been in doubt. Writing on the occasion of the painting's inclusion in a 1930 exhibition at London's Royal Academy, the art critic Roger Fry extolled the panel, which he considered "one of the greatest revelations" of the show. Describing it as "one of the most precious masterpieces of the early fourteenth century....the work of a man who is not only a great draughtsman and designer but pre-eminently a painter," Fry lauded the unidentified artist's "rich, generous, sensual quality in the actual handling of the paint, that breath and absence of inhibiting scruple or meticulous craftsmanship which is the sign manual of the born painter."⁴

The work was formerly in the collection of the Belgian engineer and financier Adolphe Stoclet and his wife, Suzanne (d. 1949), housed in the Stoclet Palace, an Art Nouveau masterpiece in Brussels. Designed by Joseph Hoffmann, one of the era's leading artists, the home was a Gesamtkunstwerk of sorts and a showroom for the Stoclets' extensive collection, which included murals painted by Gustav Klimt.

¹ Certain scholars have also associated a Madonna and Child (Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana, inv. no. 176) with the group.

² For Offner's lecture notes, see Bellosi 2015, p. 422.

³ C. Volpe, Il lungo percorso del 'dipingere dolcissimo e tanto unito, Turin 1983, p. 272.

⁴ Fry 1930, p. 78.