XIV The Annunciation — The Virgin Mary
Vasari, in his notice of one of Giotto’s Annunciations, praises him for having justly rendered the fear of the Virgin at the address of the Angel. If he ever treated the subject in such a manner, he departed from all the traditions of his time; for I am aware of no painting of this scene, during the course of the thirteenth and following centuries, which does not represent the Virgin as perfectly tranquil, receiving the message of the Angel in solemn thought and gentle humility, but without a shadow of fear. It was reserved for the painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to change angelic majesty into reckless impetuosity, and maiden meditation into panic dread.
The face of the Virgin is slightly disappointing. Giotto never reached a very high standard of beauty in feature; depending much on distant effect in all his works, and therefore more on general arrangement of colour and sincerity of gesture, than on refinement of drawing in the countenance.