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This is a slow painting. Recent study of the canvas suggests Titian began it around 1520, when the aged Giovanni Bellini still shaped how Venice painted, then set it aside for years before returning to rework and finish it about 1535. It came to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a Venetian confraternity, through a bequest in 1555, and was hung over an arch of the great staircase in a gilded frame carrying the donor's arms. The scene keeps to essentials. The angel and the Virgin stand against a plain marble balustrade and a row of columns, and beyond them the eye slips out to trees and rock. Decades later the confraternity commissioned Tintoretto to paint a Visitation as its companion over the matching arch.