Ecce Ancilla Domini [SEP] creator
Ecce Ancilla Domini
Ecce Ancilla Domini (Latin: "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord"), or The Annunciation, is an oil painting by the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, first painted in 1850 and now in Tate Britain in London. The Latin title is a quotation from the Vulgate text of the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint Luke, describing the Annunciation, where Mary accepts the message brought to her by the Angel Gabriel that she would give birth to a child (Jesus) by God.
Rossetti's first major paintings in oil display the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His "Girlhood of Mary Virgin" (1849) and "Ecce Ancilla Domini" (1850) portray Mary as a teenage girl. William Bell Scott saw "Girlhood" in progress in Hunt's studio and remarked on young Rossetti's technique:
Stung by criticism of his second major painting, "Ecce Ancilla Domini", exhibited in 1850, and the "increasingly hysterical critical reaction that greeted Pre-Raphaelitism"