next to him, with his hand on his side, Ghirlandajo himself; the third, with long black hair, is Bastiano Mainardi, who painted the Assumption in the Baroncelli Chapel, in the Santa Croce; and the fourth, turning his back, is David Ghirlandajo.  These real personages are so managed, that, while they are not themselves actors, they do not interfere with the main action, but rather embellish and illustrate it, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy.  Every single figure in this fine fresco is a study for manly character, dignified attitude, and easy grand drapery.

In the same scene by Albert Durer,[1] the high priest, standing behind a table, rejects the offering of the lamb, and his attendant pushes away the doves.  Joachim makes a gesture of despair, and several persons who bring offerings look at him with disdain or with sympathy.

[Footnote 1:  In the set of wood-cuts of the Life of the Virgin.]

The same scene by Luini (Milan, Brera) is conceived with much pathetic as well as dramatic effect.  But as I have said enough to reader the subject easily recognized, we proceed.

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2.  “Joachim herding his sheep on the mountain, and surrounded by his shepherds, receives the message of the angel.”  This subject may so nearly resemble the Annunciation to the Shepherds in St. Luke’s Gospel, that we must be careful to distinguish them, as, indeed, the best of the old painters have done with great taste and feeling.

Is the fresco by Taddeo Gaddi (in the Baroncelli Chapel), Joachim is seated on a rocky mountain, at the base of which his sheep are feeding, and turns round to listen to the voice of the angel.  In the fresco by Giotto in the Arena at Padua, the treatment is nearly the same.[1] In the series by Luini, a stream runs down the centre of the picture:  on one side is Joachim listening to the angel, on the other, Anna is walking in her garden.  This incident is omitted by Ghirlandajo.  In Albert Durer’s composition, Joachim is seen in the foreground kneeling, and looking up at an angel, who holds out in both hands a sort of parchment roll looking like a diploma with seals appended, and which we may suppose to contain the message from on high (if it be not rather the emblem of the sealed book, so often introduced, particularly by the German masters).  A companion of Joachim also looks up with amazement, and farther in the distance are sheep and shepherds.

[Footnote 1:  The subject will be found in the set of wood-cuts published by the Arundel Society.]

The Annunciation to St. Anna may be easily mistaken for the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary;—­we must therefore be careful to discriminate, by an attention to the accessories.  Didron observes that in Western art the annunciation to St. Anna usually takes place in a chamber.  In the East it takes place in a garden, because there “on vit feu dans les maisons et beaucoup en plein air;” but, according to the legend, the locality ought to be a garden, and under a laurel tree, which is not always attended to.