TER AMA

nce: she is showing in one of a thousand tender ways her motherly affection for her child. She clasps him in her arms, holding him to her breast, pres

while the portrait Madonna, and the Madonna in landscape or domestic scenes, are readily conceived as the Mater Amabilis. Nevertheless, these distinctions have not by any means been rigidly regarded in ar

re in the midst of a multitude of pictures which no man can numb

f human nature. To the interpretation of mother-love he brought all the fresh ardor of youth, and a sunny temperament which saw only joy in the f

s soft cheek. In the Orleans and Colonna pictures she smiles indulgently into his eyes as he lies across her lap, plucking at the bo

lift her child from his cradle; in the Chair Madonna, how protecting is the capacious embrace with which she gathers him to herself in brooding love. No technica

ted to him. The outer circumstances of his life moved in a quiet groove which was almost humdrum. He passed his days in comparative obscurity at Parma, far from the great art influences of his time. But isolation seemed the better to develop his rare individuality. He was the architect of his own fortunes, and wrought out independently a style p

something worthy to compare with Raphael. There are several of these, produced in rapid succession during the period when the artis

drops at one side on a step, forming a soft, blue cushion for the babe. Here the little darling lies, looking up into his mother's

ng her babe, and smilingly arrests his hand, which, on a sudden impulse, he has stretched towards some coveted object. The same face is almost exactly repeated in the Madonna of the Hermitage Gal

the artist's wife, sits with the child asleep on her lap. With motherly tenderness she bends so closely over him that her f

are all in a playful mood. The same playfulness, but of a more sweet and motherly kind, lights the face of the Madonna della Scala. The composition is somewhat in the portrait style, showing the mother in half length, seat

fter years, the wall which it decorated was incorporated into a small new church, of which it formed the rear wall. To accommodate the high level

-Madonna d

defacement which it bears are due to the votive offerings which were formerly fastened upon it,-among them, a silver crown worn by the Madonna a

ess.[4] But when love melts her heart how gracious is her unbending, how winning her smile! Once she goes so far as to play in the fields with her little boy, quieting a rabbit with one hand for him to admire. (La Vierge au Lapin, Louvre.) In other pictures she holds him lying across her lap, smiling thoughtfully upon him. Such an one is the Madonna

the Belvedere at Vienna, and the Mado

nna and Sain

y denying his appeal. A more beautiful mother, or a more bewitching babe, it were hard to find. Three fine half-length figures of saints complete this composition, each of great interest and indi

as Raphael's or Titian's, invests it with a new beauty. Other pictures of this class should be mentioned in the same connection. There is one in the Hermitage Gallery at St. Petersburg, attributed by late critics to the little-known painter, Bernardino de' Conti. The Madonna's face, her hair dr

which guards the child while he sleeps; nor is infancy ever more appealing than in peaceful and innocent slumber. Mrs. Browning understood this well, when she wrote her beautiful poem interpreting the thoughts of "the Virgin Ma

. The Madonna of the Diadem, in the Louvre, belongs to this class of pictures. Like the pastoral Madonnas of the Florentine period, it includes th

uently painted the subject. Their Madonnas often seem affected, not to say sentimental, after the simpler and nobler types of the earlier period. But nowhere is their peculiar sweetness more appropriate than beside a sleepin

as if its m

love's de

rose of H

its eyeli

heek in a s

Eyck and Schongauer, through Dürer and Holbein, down to Rembrandt and Rubens, we trace this strongly marked predilection in every style of composition, regardless of proprieties. Van Eyck does not hesitate to occupy his richly dressed enthroned Madonna at Fra

cares. As has been said of Dürer's Madonna,-and the description applies equally well to many others in the North,-"She suckles her son with a calm feeling of happiness; she gazes

adonna a

ere for a mode

is great Italian contemporaries. Frankly admired both by Titian and Raphael, he has in common with them the supreme gift of seeing and reproducing natural human affections. His work, however, is as thoroughly German as theirs is Italian. The Madonna of this picture has the round, maidenly face of the typical German ideal.

naturally attractive to all figure painters. While other Madonna subjects are too often beyond the comprehension of either the artist o

sitions of the enthroned and enskied Madonnas, being, as we have seen, not without illustrious predecessors among the old masters. Of these we have Guay's Mater Amabilis, where the mother leans from her throne t

n.-Madonna

girlish young mother, her long hair streaming about her, stands in upper air,

e story of a mother's love-an old, old stor