Fra Angelico was avant-garde in his time for working with linear perspective, a technique used to convey depth and distance. He employed linear perspective in this work to highlight a particularly poetic theological insight found at the Annunciation. By placing Adam and Eve at a small scale in the far left corner, a distance is conveyed between them and the figures in the foreground. The layering of the background and staggering of the colonnades close in the distance between the first Adam and first Eve, and bring us into this new scene, where we can see the new Adam (in Mary’s womb) and the new Eve. The entirety of the curse brought about in Adam and Eve’s disobedience now find its remedy in the Incarnation of Christ and obedience of Mary.

The most significant deviation from Fra Angelico’s composition is found in the gesture of Mary’s hands, caught in the act of lowering, as if to convey through gesture the words of her fiat: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Mary’s consent reveals how God’s love is always by invitation, never by coercion. When we accept His call in our lives, we—like Mary—become Christ-bearers who can bring more of His presence into the world.