e earth
vanishes, and all things are seen endowed with an harmonious glory--the
garments falling with strange, visionary grace, glowing with indefinite
gold--the walls of the chamber dazzling as of a heavenly city--the
mortal forms themselves impressed with divine changelessness--no
domesticity--no jest--no anxiety--no expectation--no variety of action
or of thought. Love, all fulfilling, and various modes of power, are
alone expressed; the Virgin never shows the complacency or petty
watchfulness of maternity; she sits serene, supporting the child whom
she ever looks upon, as a stranger among strangers; "Behold the handmaid
of the Lord" forever written upon her brow.

85. An approach to an exception in treatment is found in the
Annunciation of the upper corridor of St. Mark's, most unkindly treated
by our author:--

* * *

"Probably the earliest of the series--full of faults, but imbued with
the sweetest feeling; there is a look of naive curiosity, mingling with
the modest and meek humility of the Virgin, which almost provokes a
smile."--iii., 176.

* * *

Many a Sabbath evening of bright summer have we passed in that lonely
corridor--but not to the finding of faults, nor the provoking of smiles.
The angel is perhaps something less majestic than is usual with the
painter; but the Virgin is only the more to be worshiped, because here,
for once, set before us in the verity of life. No gorgeous robe is upon
her; no lifted throne set for her; the golden border gleams faintly on
the dark blue dress; the seat is drawn into the shadow of a lowly
loggia. The face is of no strange, far-sought loveliness; the features
might even be thought hard, and they are worn with watching, and severe,
though innocent. She stoops forward with her arms folded on her bosom:
no casting down of eye nor shrinking of the frame in fear; she is too
earnest, too self-forgetful for either: wonder and inquiry are there,
but chastened and free from doubt; meekness, yet mingled with a patient
majesty; peace, yet sorrowfully sealed, as if the promise of the Angel
were already underwritten by the prophecy of Simeon. They who pass and
repass in the twilight of that solemn corridor, need not the adjuration
inscribed beneath:--

"Virginis intactae cum veneris ante figuram
Praetereundo cave ne sileatur Ave."[10]

We in general allow the inferiority of Angelico's fresco to his tempera
works; yet even that whi