as the question "how this should
be?" (Luke i. 29.) The attitude, therefore, which some painters have
given to her, as if she had started from her seat, not only in terror,
but in indignation, is altogether misplaced. A signal instance is
the statue of the Virgin by Mocchi in the choir of the cathedral at
Orvieto, so grand in itself, and yet so offensive as a devotional
figure. Misplaced is also, I think, the sort of timid shrinking
surprise which is the expression in some pictures. The moment is
much too awful, the expectance much too sublime, for any such human,
girlish emotions. If the painter intend to express the moment in which
the angel appears and utters the salutation, "Hail!" then Mary may be
standing, and her looks directed towards him, as in a fine majestic
Annunciation of Andrea del Sarto. Standing was the antique attitude
of prayer; so that if we suppose her to have been interrupted in her
devotions, the attitude is still appropriate. But if that moment
be chosen in which she expressed her submission to the divine will,
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord! let it be unto me according to thy
word!" then she might surely kneel with bowed bead, and folded hands,
and "downcast eyes beneath th' almighty Dove." No attitude could be
too humble to express that response; and Dante has given us, as the
most perfect illustration of the virtue of humility, the sentiment and
attitude of Mary when submitting herself to the divine will. (Purg.
x., Cary's Trans.)

"The angel (who came down to earth
With tidings of the peace to many years
Wept for in vain, that op'd the heavenly gates
From their long interdict) before us seem'd
In a sweet act so sculptur'd to the life,
He look'd no silent image. One had sworn
He had said 'Hail!' for SHE was imag'd there,
By whom the key did open to God's love;
And in her act as sensibly imprest
That word, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord,'
As figure seal'd on wax."

And very beautifully has Flaxman transferred the sculpture "divinely
wrought upon the rock of marble white" to earthly form.

* * * * *

The presence of the Holy Spirit in the historical Annunciations is to
be accounted for by the words of St. Luke, and the visible form of the
Dove is conventional and authorized. In many pictures, the celestial
Dove enters by the open casement. Sometimes it seems to brood
immediately over the head of the Virgin; sometimes it hovers t