Ecce Ancilla Domini

A girl in white shrinks back on her bed as a wingless angel offers her a lily. Rossetti painted his sister as Mary in 1850, and the Victorian public did not know what to make of it.

The story behind the painting

Ecce Ancilla Domini!, Latin for Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, also called The Annunciation, is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, first painted in 1850. The title quotes the Vulgate text of the first chapter of Luke's Gospel, where Mary accepts the message of the Angel Gabriel that she will bear a child by God. The title correctly carries an exclamation mark, though many sources leave it out. Rossetti's sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, posed for Mary, and his brother William posed for Gabriel. It was a family picture in every sense.

What to look for

Rossetti deliberately kept to a limited range of colours. White, symbol of virginity, dominates, set against a vibrant blue linked to Mary and a red for Christ's blood. He changed Christina's hair to auburn to continue the red. Gabriel holds a lily, the traditional flower of Mary in Italian Renaissance art but also a funeral flower pointing to Christ's death. At the foot of the bed is the red vestment on a hinged frame that Mary was embroidering in his Girlhood of Mary Virgin of 1849. Note the dove's halo and the two different haloes of Mary and Gabriel.

Meaning and intent

The picture breaks with tradition. The angel usually appears while Mary prays; here she is in bed, woken, in a long nightgown that suggests a newly married bride. Gabriel has no wings, the flames at his feet suggest a classical influence, and his nakedness can be glimpsed through the side of his robe. These choices made the reviews mixed. The difference between the haloes may come from time itself: Mary's was painted in 1850, while Gabriel's was added only in 1853, after Rossetti had returned to the canvas.

Legacy

The painting was first shown in April 1850 at the Old Portland Gallery on Regent Street in London. Francis McCracken, a well known patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, bought it in 1853, and the Tate Gallery acquired it in 1886. Today it hangs at Tate Britain in London, in the section of historic and early British modern art. The small, pale canvas remains one of the defining images of the young Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.