 The Virgin holds an innovative and unusual position. She seems to be either rising or swooning as if having lost her balance, a divergence from her conventional seated or kneeling pose. Blum believes "one may search in vain in other Netherlandish Annunciation panels of the fifteenth century of a Virgin positioned as she is here". Art historian Penny Jolly suggests the painting shows a birthing position, a motif van der Weyden experimented with in the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, where the Virgin's collapse results in a childbirth-like posture, and with the Descent from the Cross, in which Mary Magdalen bends and crouches – similar to the position Memling's Magdalen assumes in his Lamentation. Flanking the Virgin, and holding her, are two attendant angels. The one to the left lifts the Virgin's robe while the other gazes at the viewer, "soliciting our response", according to Ainsworth. Both are small-statured, solemn, and according to Blum, in mood "comparable to that of Gabriel." Other than the presence of the angels, Memling shows a typical upper-merchant-class 15th-century Flemish bedchamber.
