This painting has a lot of open doorways, passages, and open curtains. These lead to its meaning. Saint Andrew of Crete, in a homily, stresses the liminal aspect of today's feast, the way the event transitions and opens onto the Incarnation of the Lord. In an antiphon from Lauds today we sing (with reference to Isaiah 11: 1-3) "When the most holy Virgin was born, the whole world was made radiant; blessed is the branch and blessed is the stem which bore such holy fruit." The hanging lamp and curtain (a reference to the Holy of Holies in the Temple) disclose a plaque inscribed in Hebrew: "Holy, holy, holy" (the song of the cherubim in the Temple in Isaiah 6); and "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord." (from Psalm 118, a song of procession to the Altar within the Temple, which song also contains the verse: "This is the Lord's own gate, where the Just One may enter."). All of this shows that the newborn child, Mary, is the Gate of the Lord and the Ark of the Covenant.