In the majority of the Annunciations which were painted during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the archangel Gabriel carries a lily. In the earliest representations of the subject he has simply a herald’s wand, which in later Byzantine art usually terminated in a fleur-de-lys, the ancient symbol of royalty, or in a more or less elaborate cross. More rarely he carries a scroll on which are inscribed the words of his message. In the early Sienese school he still holds the herald’s wand,[217] or brings to the Virgin a branch of olive,[218] the symbol of peace and goodwill. Once at least he holds a branch of laurel,[219] the meed of those who excel, and sometimes the palm[220] of victory over sin. In the famous Annunciation of Simone Martini,[221] Gabriel, who carries a branch of olive, is also olive-crowned, and this seems to be the proper symbolism of the subject. The messenger of God, crowned with peace, brings the olive branch of reconciliation between God and man to the Virgin, beside whom stands a vase filled with the lilies which symbolize her purity. The dove hovers above. It has not been decided which artist was the first to place the stalk of lilies in the angel Gabriel’s hand, and first had come the lovely symbol of the vase of lilies by the Virgin’s side. But in the Annunciation, which forms part of Simone Martini’s polyptych in the Museum of Antwerp, we find the herald’s wand just turning to a lily. Professor A. Venturi, in his magnificent _History of Italian Art_, describes it. The angel ‘holds a lily with a long stem, which is all white. Thus the stick or sceptre of ivory, which we have already seen in Duccio’s picture, has become partly stick, partly lily-stem. With Duccio it is still the sceptre with three points, that Gabriel, messenger of God, holds as sign of authority. But look how the three points change themselves to lily-buds, and open the corolla, as the archangel extends the candid flower towards the Virgin, who was saluted by David and the Fathers as “The lily of the valleys.” The poetry of Christian art thus overthrows mediæval materialism and lavishes flowers on fair likenesses of Mary.’ In this Annunciation we find the three types of lilies used in art--the lily growing freely and naturally in a vase beside the Virgin; the stiff lily, half conventionalized in the angel’s hand; and the fleurs-de-lys, wholly conventional, which ornament the arms of the Virgin’s seat. Simone Martini died in 1344, and by 1359, the date of its completion, every Florentine artist must have seen the wonderful tabernacle raised by Orcagna in Or San Michele, and every artist in Italy must have heard descriptions of the shrine. ‘Che passa di bellezza, s’io ben recolo, Tutti gli altri che son dentro del secolo.’[222]