Few of this painter's early works are identified, and no frescoes from his designs appear to survive; but his altar-picture painted for the Bonaventura chapel in the church of S. Bernardino at Urbino, and now by the hazards of war in the Brera at Milan, offers one of the most remarkable compositions of the age. The Annunciation, that graceful theme of Christian art, had hitherto been treated upon one uniform type, and though ever attractive was generally trite. The Virgin surprised by her heavenly visitor was a subject requiring, in contrast, the purest earthly and celestial beauty which the painter could invent. The early masters sought not to introduce any other character than that of hallowed loveliness, refined from worldly sentiment; their successors added what was meant for grace of manner, which in their hands generally fell into affected mannerism. Timoteo held a middle course, giving play to his fancy, but restraining its flight by the spell of holy reverence. Amid a fine and far-stretching landscape stands the Virgin, nobly beautiful, gazing with prayerful aspect upon an angel, whose demi-figure issues from a cloud. Far above her head the infant Saviour, supported by a dove in a triangular halo of dazzling splendour, descends from the skies to become incarnate in the womb of Mary; his foot poised upon a globe, and the cross resting in his left hand, whilst his right is raised in benediction. The archangel with out-stretched arms indicates the mother to the child, and the child to the mother, thus beautifully executing his mission by an expressive sign. In front of her, but on a lower level, so as to appear of less majestic presence, stand the Precursor and St. Sebastian; the former points to the principal group as the fulfilment of a cycle of prophecy which in his person was complete; the latter is a graceful prototype of that long series of martyrs who were destined to seal with blood their testimony to the atonement thus initiated. One portion of this novel theme had been anticipated by Giovanni Sanzi, in whose representation of the same subject at the Brera, though composed after old conventional ideas, the divine Infant is seen descending from the Almighty upon the Virgin, instead of the dove, which usually figures as the Holy Spirit. But such innovations were looked upon with watchful jealousy by a Church wedded to traditional conventionalities. Doubts were raised as to the orthodoxy of this representation of the Trinity, and an unfortunate ruddy tint suffused over the plumage of the snowy dove was construed into a stain on the immaculate character of the conception, which is usually represented as coincident with the Annunciation. The altar-piece was removed to undergo along with its author a searching examination, which resulted in its restoration as an object of devotion, and in his escape from the rigours of the Holy Office.