The Visitation

Chieri is a small town about 15 kilometres south-east of Turin. In the 15th century one of its families, the Villa, were bankers settled in the Low Countries who kept their ties with home and founded chapels in the town's Dominican church, San Domenico. The Louvre thinks a member of that family ordered the triptych this panel comes from, and that the altarpiece may well have stood in that church.

This was its right wing. In the centre, now in Paris, the angel tells Mary that she will bear a son. Here follows the next episode in Luke's Gospel, Mary's visit to her older cousin Elizabeth, who is expecting the child who will become John the Baptist. The Galleria Sabauda keeps Rogier van der Weyden's name on the panel and adds the words Flemish circle beside it, a caution that matches the Louvre's, which now gives the centre to his workshop.