I cannot decide at what period the lily first replaced the sceptre in the hand of the angel, not merely as the emblem of purity, but as the symbol of the Virgin from the verse in the Canticles usually applied to her: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley.’ A lily is often placed in a vase near the Virgin, or in the foreground of the picture: of all the attributes placed in the hand of the angel, the lily is the most usual and the most expressive. The painters of Siena, who often displayed a new and original sentiment in the treatment of a subject, have represented the angel Gabriel as the announcer of ‘peace on earth;’ he kneels before the Virgin, crowned with olive, and bearing a branch of olive in his hand, as in a picture by Taddeo Bartoli. There is also a beautiful St. Gabriel by Martin Schoen, standing, and crowned with olive. So Dante— L’ angel che venne in terra col decreto Della molt’ anni lagrimata pace. Another passage in Dante which the painters seem to have had before them shows us the Madonna as queen, and the angel as adoring:— ‘Qual è quel angel che con tanto giuoco Guarda negli occhi la nostra regina Innamorato sì che par di fuoco?’ Ed egli a me,—‘Baldezza e leggiadria Quanta esser puote in angelo ed in alma Tutta è in lui, e si volem che sia!’ It is in seeking this _baldezza e leggiadria_ in a mistaken sense that the later painters have forgotten all the spiritual dignity of the Angel Messenger. Where the angel bears a lighted taper, which the Virgin extends her hand to take from him; or, kneeling, bears in his hand a palm-branch, surmounted by seven or twelve stars (44), the subject represented is not the announcement of the birth of the Saviour, but the death of the Virgin, a part of her legendary history which is rarely treated and easily mistaken; then the announcing angel is not Gabriel, but Michael.[92] [Illustration: 44 Angel announcing the death of the Virgin (F. Filippo Lippi)] 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]