[Footnote 1:  For a full account of the legends relating to Elizabeth, the mother of the Baptist, see the fourth series of Sacred and Legendary Art.]

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Such a woman as we believe Mary to have been must have loved and honoured such a woman as Elizabeth.  Wherefore, having heard that Elizabeth had been exalted to a miraculous motherhood, she made haste to visit her, not to ask her advice,—­for being graced with all good gifts of the Holy Spirit, and herself the mother of Wisdom, she could not need advice,—­but to sympathize with her cousin and reveal what had happened to herself.

Thus then they met, “these two mothers of two great princes, of whom one was pronounced the greatest born of woman, and the other was his Lord:”  happiest and most exalted of all womankind before or since, “needs must they have discoursed like seraphim and the most ecstasied order of Intelligences!” Such was the blessed encounter represented in the Visitation.

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The number of the figures, the locality and circumstances, vary greatly.  Sometimes we have only the two women, without accessories of any kind, and nothing interferes with the high solemnity of that moment in which Elizabeth confesses the mother of her Lord.  The better to express this willing homage, this momentous prophecy, she is often kneeling.  Other figures are frequently introduced, because it could not be supposed that Mary made the journey from Nazareth to the dwelling of Zacharias near Jerusalem, a distance of fifty miles, alone.  Whether her husband Joseph accompanied her, is doubtful; and while many artists have introduced him, others have omitted him altogether.  According to the ancient Greek formula laid down for the religious painters, Mary is accompanied by a servant or a boy, who carries a stick across his shoulder, and a basket slung to it.  The old Italians who followed the Byzantine models seldom omit this attendant, but in some instances (as in the magnificent composition of Michael Angelo, in the possession of Mr. Bromley, of Wootten) a handmaid bearing a basket on her head is substituted for the boy.  In many instances Joseph, attired as a traveller, appears behind the Virgin, and Zacharias, in his priestly turban and costume, behind Elizabeth.

The locality is often an open porch or a garden in front of a house; and this garden of Zacharias is celebrated in Eastern tradition.  It is related that the blessed Virgin, during her residence with her cousin Elizabeth, frequently recreated herself by walking in the garden of Zacharias, while she meditated on the strange and lofty destiny to which she was appointed; and farther, that happening one day to touch a certain flower, which grew there, with her most blessed hand, from being inodorous before, it became from that moment deliciously fragrant.  The garden therefore was a fit place for the meeting.