Philippe de Montebello has proved yet again this year that great gifts can indeed come in small packages. Last year, if you will recall, he brought us Duccio’s “Madonna and Child,” purchased for the Metropolitan Museum’s permanent collection. This season, though it is only on loan, he has graced New York with another Italian masterpiece – Antonello da Messina’s “The Virgin Annunciate.”

“The Virgin Annunciate,” on loan from Palermo’s Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, is one of a dozen small pictures in the intimate gathering “Antonello da Messina: Sicily’s Renaissance Master.” “The Virgin” is one of two utterly miraculous paintings in the show – the other is Antonello’s “Portrait of a Man” (c. late 1460s-72) from the Museo della Fondazione Culturale Mandralisca, Cefalu, Palermo, a bust-length depiction of a baron in an astounding array of gleaming blacks, whites, and salmony golds. Together they are enough to show why the man who painted them was one of the greatest and possibly most influential painters of the Quattrocento.

Not much is known about the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina (c. 1430-79). He is credited with being one of the first Italian Renaissance artists to combine the deft realism of Netherlandish oil painting with that of the clear geometry of Piero.

Some scholars (Keith Christiansen, who contributed to the show’s catalog, is not among them) believe he may have introduced oil painting to Giovanni Bellini. Antonello is also credited with creating what is known as the psychological portrait. His portraits bear comparison to those of his contemporary Hans Memling, whose works can be seen through the end of this month at the Frick Collection.

What is certain is that Antonello, born in Messina, studied with the Netherlandish-influenced painter Niccolo Colantonio in Naples. Antonello probably traveled to Rome,where he would have seen works by Fra Angelico and Piero. He made at least one trip to Venice, in 1475, where he either greatly influenced or was greatly influenced by Bellini.

Regardless of who influenced whom, Antonello’s paintings are unique. They can have the shivering Venetian light and effervescent translucency found in the late works of Titian and Bellini, but also the solidity, minutiae, and variousness of qualities – the tactile sensations of velvet, skin, rock, and sky – traditionally seen in works by the northern painters Petrus Christus, Gerard David, Rogier van der Weyden, and Jan van Eyck.

“The Virgin Annunciate” (c. 1475-76) has mystifying moments equal to those in Leonardo or Vermeer. A small, magnificent oil on panel, roughly 18 inches high by 14 inches across, it is nevertheless monumental. The painting is a frontal, bust-length portrait of the Virgin, a pyramidal, blue form – astonishingly translucent, yet opaque – on a mysterious black ground. The Virgin, seen alone in the picture, is surprised by Gabriel and looks up from her devotions at the lectern.

Seen from a distance of three galleries away – an enormous expanse made possible by its current hanging at the Metropolitan – the picture’s subject and color are unmistakably clear, and its crystalline light and geometric clarity pull you nearer. She rises like a mountain from the base of the picture; her face and hands gleam like precious gems at the bottom of a darkened pool or like the first glimpses of sunlight in a storm-bruised sky.

As you get closer to the painting, the Virgin’s innocence and strength gain in equal measure. Her golden, solidly carved, buttery smooth face, eyes averted, shines out from under her hood; and her golden hands hover like startled birds in the blue of her mantle.

Her left hand is raised and opens, cautioning you not to come nearer. It slows your approach nearly to a standstill. The hand also appears to recoil, as if she had touched something hot; to pull back into a mysterious cavity in her chest; and also to reach blindly, as if she were attempting to grasp something she cannot see.

Her arms, oddly foreshortened and retracted, are almost nonexistent. They appear to have originated from behind her, locking her to the fluid blackness, transforming the blue into sky or sea. Like every form in the painting, the arms and hands simultaneously advance and recede – give of themselves and withdraw.

The hands also quell the shimmer and quake caused by Gabriel’s visit, which seems to have thrown everything off-center. The rising lectern, precariously balanced en pointe at its corner in the center of the picture, is pulled unnaturally upward by the wing like pages of the Gospel. The dancing centerline of the painting zigzags as it moves upward and pulls at her robe, neck, and face, and at her lips, drawing them into serene resignation and flowering smile.

The two masterpieces “Portrait of a Man” and “The Virgin” are accompanied by a handful of works from Italian and private collections, including two tiny, two-sided paintings by Antonello: “The Madonna and Child With a Praying Franciscan Donor” and “Ecce Homo” (1450s-60s), and “Ecce Homo” and “Saint Jerome in the Desert” (1460s). The “Ecce Homo” paintings seem to verge on Mannerism, yet are subdued with pathos and classical restraint.

The show is also supplemented with works from the Metropolitan’s own collection: an attributed ink drawing “Group of Draped Figures”(c.1475-76); Antonello’s two paintings “Portrait of a Man” and “Christ Crowned With Thorns” (both c. 1470); paintings by the Netherlandish artists Petrus Christus and Barthelemy d’Eyck; and the Venetian Jacometto Veneziano – all of which put Antonello in context.

This stupendous little gem of an exhibition is a bit of a tease – it makes me long for a full-blown retrospective of Antonello – but I am not complaining. “The Virgin Annunciate” by itself is confirmation that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Christmas has once again come early.

Until March 5 (1000 Fifth Avenue, at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).