In a beautiful Annunciation by Johan Van Eyck (Munich Gal., Cabinet iii. 35), the Virgin kneels at a desk with a book before her.  She has long fair hair, and a noble intellectual brow.  Gabriel, holding his sceptre, stands in the door-way.  The Dove enters by the lattice.  A bed is in the background, and in front a pot of lilies.  In another Annunciation by Van Eyck, painted on the Ghent altar-piece, we have the mystic, not the historical, representation, and a very beautiful effect is produced by clothing both the angel and Mary in robes of pure white. (Berlin Gal., 520, 521.)

In an engraving after Rembrandt, the Virgin kneels by a fountain, and the angel kneels on the opposite side.  This seems to express the legendary scene.

These few observations on the general arrangement of the theme, whether mystical or historical, will, I hope, assist the observer in discriminating for himself.  I must not venture further, for we have a wide range of subjects before us.

THE VISITATION.

Ital. La Visitazione di Maria. Fr. La Visitation de la Vierge Ger. Die Heimsuchung Mariae.  July 2.

After the Annunciation of the angel, the Scripture goes on to relate how “Mary arose and went up into the hill country with haste, to the house of her cousin Elizabeth, and saluted her.”  This meeting of the two kinswomen is the subject styled in art the “Visitation,” and sometimes the “Salutation of Elizabeth.”  It is of considerable importance, in a series of the life of the Virgin, as an event; and also, when taken separately in its religious significance, as being the first recognition of the character of the Messiah.  “Whence is this to me,” exclaims Elizabeth, “that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke i. 43); and as she spoke this through the influence of the Holy Spirit, and not through knowledge, she is considered in the light of a prophetess.

Of Elizabeth I must premise a few words, because in many representations relating to the life of the Virgin, and particularly in those domestic groups, the Holy Families properly so called, she is a personage of great importance, and we ought to be able, by some preconceived idea of her bearing and character, to test the propriety of that impersonation usually adopted by the artists.  We must remember that she was much older than her cousin, a woman “well stricken in years;” but it is a, great mistake to represent her as old, as wrinkled and decrepit, as some painters have done.  We are told that she was righteous before the Lord, “walking in all his commandments blameless:”  the manner in which she received the visit of Mary, acknowledging with a glad humility the higher destinies of her young relative, show her to have been free from all envy and jealousy.  Therefore all pictures of Elizabeth should exhibit her as an elderly, but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even as her conduct had been blameless before man.[1]