In the church of Santissima Annunziata in Sturla, a district of Genoa, is a forgotten altarpiece of a very high quality with distinctive characteristics of the Venetian figurative culture.
From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century the church was run by the Venetian congregation of the Canons of San Giorgio in Alga. The altarpiece is currently attributed to Valerio Corte (1530-1580), a Venetian painter whose activity is documented in Genoa, even though no works firmly attributable to him actually survive. However, the style clearly shows that this work was painted much earlier in the sixteenth century, its author being identifiable as Palma il Vecchio, an artist who had contacts with the congregation of San Giorgio in Alga in the mid-1520s.