Bloch sets Mary at the left edge, under a dark stone arch, hands folded at her chin. Everything to her right dissolves into light, and Gabriel is painted almost entirely out of that light: a tall, pale figure you have to look for, as if heaven had come into the room without displacing anything in it.

The contrast is the whole story. Mary is solid, warm and red, a young woman of Nazareth. The messenger is translucent. She looks up, not afraid, and the painting holds the moment just before her answer: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.”