Now, as to the attitude and occupation of Mary at the moment the angel entered, authorities are not agreed.  It is usual to exhibit her as kneeling in prayer, or reading with a large book open on a desk before her.  St. Bernard says that she was studying the book of the prophet Isaiah, and as she recited the verse, “Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” she thought within her heart, in her great humility, “How blessed the woman of whom these words are written!  Would I might be but her handmaid to serve her, and allowed, to kiss her feet!”—­when, in the same instant, the wondrous vision burst upon her, and the holy prophecy was realized in herself. (Il perfetto Legendario.)

I think it is a manifest fault to disturb the sublime tenor of the scene by representing Mary as starting up in alarm; for, in the first place, she was accustomed, as we have seen, to the perpetual ministry of angels, who daily and hourly attended on her.  It is, indeed, said that Mary was troubled; but it was not the presence, but the “saying” of the angel which troubled her—­it was 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.”