The painter depicts the meeting between the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth through a restrained, deeply human reading of the Gospel episode; the composition focuses on the affectionate exchange between the two women, rendered with engaged empathy and a pictorial language of warm devotional sensitivity. Note how the gaze and the hands of the two women are directed toward each other’s womb: both, in fact, bear life within them — one the Baptist, the other the Savior.
The work shows features consistent with 17th-century Genoese painting and De Ferrari’s manner, marked by warm tonalities, soft shadows, and close attention to the expressive truth of the faces.
Height 100 cm, width 79 cm
(39 3/8 in.; 31 1/8 in.)