In old German Art, the angel in the Annunciation is habited in priestly garments richly embroidered (42). The scene is often the bedroom of the Virgin; and while the announcing angel enters and kneels at the threshold of the door, the Holy Ghost enters at the window. I have seen examples in which Gabriel, entering at a door behind the Virgin, unfolds his official ‘Ave Maria.’ He has no lily, or sceptre, and she is apparently conscious of his presence without seeing him.[93]
But in the representations of the sixteenth century we find neither the solemnity of the early Italian nor the naïveté of the early German school; and this divine subject becomes more and more materialised and familiarised, until, losing its spiritual character, it strikes us as shockingly prosaic. One cannot say that the angel is invariably deficient in dignity, or the Virgin in grace. In the Venetian school and the Bologna school we find occasionally very beautiful Annunciations; but in general the half-draped fluttering angels and the girlish-looking Virgins are nothing less than offensive; and in the attempt to vary the sentiment, the naturalisti have here run the risk of being much too natural.
45 The Archangel Gabriel (Van Eyck)
In the Cathedral at Orvieto, the Annunciation is represented in front of the choir by two colossal statues by Francesco Mochi: to the right is the angel Gabriel, poised on a marble cloud, in an attitude so fantastic that he looks as if he were going to dance; on the other side stands the Virgin, conceived in a spirit how different!—yet not less mistaken; she has started from her throne; with one hand she grasps it, with the other she seems to guard her person against the intruder: majesty at once, and fear, a look of insulted dignity, are in the air and attitude,—‘par che minacci e tema nel tempo istesso’—but I thought of Mrs. Siddons while I looked, not of the Virgin Mary.
This fault of sentiment I saw reversed, but equally in the extreme, in another example—a beautiful miniature.[94] The Virgin, seated on the side of her bed, sinks back alarmed, almost fainting; the angel in a robe of crimson, with a white tunic, stands before her, half turning away and grasping his sceptre in his hand, with a proud commanding air, like a magnificent surly god—a Jupiter who had received a repulse.
I pass over other instances conceived in a taste even more blamable—Gabriels like smirking, winged lord chamberlains; and Virgins, half prim, half voluptuous—the sanctity and high solemnity of the event utterly lost. Let this suffice for the present: I may now leave the reader to his own feeling and discrimination.
St. Raphael.
Lat. Sanctus Raphael. Ital. San Raffaello. Fr. Saint Raphael. Ger. Der Heilige Rafael.
‘I am Raphael, one of the Seven Holy Angels which present the prayers of the Saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.’—Tobit xii. 15.