Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts Part 11

_Ital._ La Madre di Dolore. L' Addolorata. _Fr._ Notre Dame da Pitie.

La Vierge de Douleur. _Sp_. Nuestra Senora de Dolores _Ger._ Die Schmerzhafte Mutter.

One of the most important of these devotional subjects proper to the Madonna is the "Mourning Mother," the _Mater Dolorosa_, in which her character is that of the mother of the crucified Redeemer; the mother of the atoning Sacrifice; the queen of martyrs; the woman whose bosom was pierced with a sharp sword; through whose sorrow the world was saved, whose anguish was our joy, and to whom the Roman Catholic Christians address their prayers as consoler of the afflicted, because she had herself tasted of the bitterest of all earthly sorrow, the pang of the agonized mother for the loss of her child.

In this character we have three distinct representations of the Madonna.

MATER DOLOROSA. In the first she appears alone, a seated or standing figure, often the head or half length only; the hands clasped, the head bowed in sorrow, tears streaming from the heavy eyes, and the whole expression intensely mournful. The features are properly those of a woman in middle age; but in later times the sentiment of beauty predominated over that of the mother's agony; and I have seen the sublime Mater Dolorosa transformed into a merely beautiful and youthful maiden, with such an air of sentimental grief as might serve for the loss of a sparrow.

Not so with the older heads; even those of the Carracci and the Spanish school have often a wonderful depth of feeling.

It is common in such representations to represent the Virgin with a sword in her bosom, and even with _seven_ swords in allusion to the _seven_ sorrows. This very material and palpable version of the allegorical prophecy (Luke ii, 35) has been found extremely effective as an appeal to the popular feelings, so that there are few Roman Catholic churches without such a painful and literal interpretation of the text. It occurs perpetually in prints, and there is a fine example after Vandyck; sometimes the swords are placed round her head; but there is no instance of such a figure from the best period of religious art, and it must be considered as anything but artistic: in this case, the more materialized and the more matter of fact, the more _unreal_.

STABAT MATER. A second representation of the _Madre di Dolore_ is that figure of the Virgin which, from the very earliest times, was placed on the right of the Crucifix, St. John the Evangelist being invariably on the left. I am speaking here of the _crucifix_ as a wholly ideal and mystical emblem of our faith in a crucified Saviour; not of the _crucifixion_ as an event, in which the Virgin is an actor and spectator, and is usually fainting in the arms of her attendants. In the ideal subject she is merely an ideal figure, at once the mother of Christ, and the personified Church. This, I think, is evident from those very ancient carvings, and examples in stained gla.s.s, in which the Virgin, as the Church, stands on one side of the cross, trampling on a female figure which personifies Judaism or the synagogue. Even when the allegory is less palpable, we feel that the treatment is wholly religious and poetical.

The usual att.i.tude of the _Mater Dolorosa_ by the crucifix is that of intense but resigned sorrow; the hands clasped, the head declined and shaded by a veil, the figure closely wrapped in a dark blue or violet mantle. In some instances a more generally religious and ideal cast is given to the figure; she stands with outspread arms, and looking up; not weeping, but in her still beautiful face a mingled expression of faith and anguish. This is the true conception of the sublime hymn,

"Stabat Mater Dolorosa Juxta crucem lachrymosa Dum pendebat filius."

LA PIETa. The third, and it is the most important and most beautiful of all as far as the Virgin is concerned, is the group called the PIETa, which, when strictly devotional, consists only of the Virgin with her dead Son in her arms, or on her lap, or lying at her feet; in some instances with lamenting angels, but no other personages.

This group has been varied in a thousand ways; no doubt the two most perfect conceptions are those of Michael Angelo and Raphael; the first excelling in sublimity, the latter in pathos. The celebrated marble group by Michael Angelo stands in the Vatican in a chapel to the right as we enter. The Virgin is seated; the dead Saviour lies across the knees of his mother; she looks down on him in mingled sorrow and resignation, but the majestic resignation predominates. The composition of Raphael exists only as a print; but the flimsy paper, consecrated through its unspeakable beauty, is likely to be as lasting as the marble. It represents the Virgin, standing with outstretched arms, and looking up with an appealing agonized expression towards heaven; before her, on the earth, lies extended the form of the Saviour. In tenderness, dignity, simplicity, and tragic pathos, nothing can exceed this production; the head of the Virgin in particular is regarded as a masterpiece, so far exceeding in delicacy of execution every other work of Marc Antonio, that some have thought that Raphael himself took the burin from his hand, and touched himself that face of quiet woe.

Another example of wonderful beauty is the Pieta by Francia, in our National Gallery. The form of Christ lies extended before his mother; a lamenting angel sustains the head, another is at the feet: the Virgin, with eyes red and heavy with weeping, looks out of the picture. There needs no visible sword in her bosom to tell what anguish has pierced that maternal heart.

There is another Pieta, by Michael Angelo, quite a different conception. The Virgin sits at the foot of the cross; before her, and half-sustained by her knees, lies the form of the dead Saviour, seen in front; his arms are held up by two angels (unwinged, as is usual with Michael Angelo). The Virgin looks up to heaven with an appealing expression; and in one engraving of this composition the cross is inscribed with the words, "Tu non pensi quanta sangue costa." There is no painting by Michael Angelo himself, but many copies and engravings of the drawing. A beautiful small copy, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Queen's Gallery.

There is yet another version of the Pieta, quite mystical and devotional in its significance,--but, to my feeling, more painful and material than poetical. It is variously treated; for example:--1.

The dead Redeemer is seen half-length within the tomb; his hands are extended to show his wounds; his eyes are closed, his head declined, his bleeding brow encircled by thorns. On one side is the Virgin, on the other St. John the Evangelist, in att.i.tudes of profound grief and commiseration. 2. The dead form, half emerging from the tomb, is sustained in the arms of the Mater Dolorosa. St. John the Evangelist on the other side. There are sometimes angels.

The Pieta thus conceived as a purely religious and ideal impersonation of the atoning Sacrifice, is commonly placed over the altar of the sacrament, and in many altar-pieces it forms the centre of the predella, just in front where the ma.s.s is celebrated, or on the door of the tabernacle, where the Host is deposited.

When, with the Mater Dolorosa and St. John, Mary Magdalene is introduced with her dishevelled hair, the group ceases to be properly a Pieta, and becomes a representation rather than a symbol.

There are also examples of a yet more complex but still perfectly ideal and devotional treatment, in which the Mourning Mother is attended by saints.

A most celebrated instance of this treatment is the Pieta by Guido.

(Bologna Gal.) In the upper part of the composition, the figure of the dead Redeemer lies extended on a white shroud; behind him stands the Virgin-mother, with her eyes raised to heaven, and sad appealing face, touched with so divine a sorrow--so much of dignity in the midst of infinite anguish, that I know nothing finer in its way. Her hands are resignedly folded in each other, not raised, not clasped, but languidly drooping. An angel stands at the feet of Christ looking on with a tender adoring commiseration; another, at his head, turns away weeping. A kind of curtain divides this group from the lower part of the picture, where, a.s.sembled on a platform, stand or kneel the guardian saints of Bologna: in the centre, the benevolent St. Charles Borromeo, who just about that time had been canonized and added to the list of the patrons of Bologna by a decree of the senate; on the right, St. Dominick and St. Petronius; on the left, St. Proculus and St. Francis. These sainted personages look up as if adjuring the Virgin, even by her own deep anguish, to intercede for the city; she is here at once our Lady of Pity, of Succour, and of Sorrow. This wonderful picture was dedicated, as an act of penance and piety, by the magistrates of Bologna, in 1616, and placed in their chapel in the church of the "Mendicanti," otherwise S. Maria-della-Pieta. It hung there for two centuries, for the consolation of the afflicted; it is now placed in the Academy of Bologna for the admiration of connoisseurs.

OUR LADY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.

_Ital._ La Madonna Purissima. _Lat._ Regina sine labe originali concepta. _Spa._ Nuestra Senora sin peccado concepida. La Concepcion.

_Fr._ La Conception de la Vierge Marie. _Ger._ Das Geheimniss der unbefleckten Empfangniss Maria. Dec. 8.

The last and the latest subject in which the Virgin appears alone without the Child, is that ent.i.tled the "Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin;" and sometimes merely "THE CONCEPTION." There is no instance of its treatment in the earlier schools of art; but as one of the most popular subjects of the Italian and Spanish painters of the seventeenth century, and one very frequently misunderstood, it is necessary to go into the history of its origin.

In the early ages of Christianity, it was usual to celebrate, as festivals of the Church, the Conception of Jesus Christ, and the Conception of his kinsman and precursor John the Baptist; the latter as miraculous, the former as being at once divine and miraculous. In the eleventh century it was proposed to celebrate the Conception of the Virgin Mother of the Redeemer.

From the time that the heresy of Nestorius had been condemned, and that the dignity of the Virgin as mother of the _Divinity_ had become a point of doctrine, it was not enough to advocate her excelling virtue and stainless purity as a mere human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that G.o.d had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even promulgated in person severe ordinances to preserve its sanctuary inviolate. How much more to him was that temple, that _tabernacle_ built by no human hands, in which he had condescended to dwell.

Nothing was impossible to G.o.d; it lay, therefore, in his power to cause his Mother to come absolutely pure and immaculate into the world: being in his power, could any earnest worshipper of the Virgin doubt for a moment that for one so favoured it would not be done? Such was the reasoning of our forefathers; and the premises granted, who shall call it illogical or irreverent?

For three or four centuries, from the seventh to the eleventh, these ideas had been gaining ground. St. Ildefonso of Seville distinguished himself by his writings on this subject; and how the Virgin recompensed his zeal, Murillo has shown us, and I have related in the life of that saint. (Legends of the Monastic Orders.) But the first mention of a festival, or solemn celebration of the Mystery of the Immaculate Conception, may be traced to an English monk of the eleventh century, whose name is not recorded, (v. Baillet, vol. xii.) When, however, it was proposed to give the papal sanction to this doctrine as an article of belief, and to inst.i.tute a church office for the purpose of celebrating the Conception of Mary, there arose strong opposition. What is singular, St. Bernard, so celebrated for his enthusiastic devotion to the Virgin, was most strenuous and eloquent in his disapprobation. He p.r.o.nounced no judgment against those who received the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, he rather leaned towards it; but he opposed the inst.i.tution of the festival as an innovation not countenanced by the early fathers of the Church. After the death of St. Bernard, for about a hundred years, the dispute slept; but the doctrine gained ground. The thirteenth century, so remarkable for the manifestation of religious enthusiasm in all its forms, beheld the revival of this celebrated controversy. A certain Franciscan friar, Duns Scotus (John Scott of Dunse), entered the lists as champion for the Virgin. He was opposed by the Dominicans and their celebrated polemic Thomas Aquinas, who, like St. Bernard, was known for his enthusiastic reverence for the Virgin; but, like him, and on the same grounds, objected to the introduction of new forms. Thus the theological schools were divided.

During the next two hundred years the belief became more and more general, the doctrine more and more popular; still the Church, while it tolerated both, refused to ratify either. All this time we find no particular representation of the favourite dogma in art, for until ratified by the authority of the Church, it could not properly enter into ecclesiastical decoration. We find, however, that the growing belief in the pure Conception and miraculous sanctification of the Virgin multiplied the representations of her coronation and glorification, as the only permitted expression of the popular enthusiasm on this point. For the powerful Order of the Franciscans, who were at this time and for a century afterwards the most ardent champions of the Immaculate Conception, were painted most of the pictures of the Coronation produced during the fourteenth century.

The first papal decree touching the "Immaculate Conception" as an article of faith, was promulgated in the reign of Sixtus IV., who had been a Franciscan friar, and he took the earliest opportunity of giving the solemn sanction of the Church to what had ever been the favourite dogma of his Order; but the celebration of the festival, never actually forbidden, had by this time become so usual, that the papal ordinance merely sanctioned without however rendering it obligatory. An office was composed for the festival, and in 1496 the Sorbonne declared in favour of it Still it remained a point of dispute; still there were dissentient voices, princ.i.p.ally among the Dominican theologians; and from 1500 to 1600 we find this controversy occupying the pens of the ecclesiastics, and exciting the interest and the imagination of the people. In Spain the "Immaculate Conception of the Virgin," owing perhaps to the popularity and power of the Franciscans in that country, had long been "the darling dogma of the Spanish Church." Villegas, in the "Flos Sanctorum," while admitting the modern origin of the opinion, and the silence of the Church, contended that, had this great fact been made manifest earlier and in less enlightened times, it might possibly have led to the error of worshipping the Virgin as an actual G.o.ddess. (Stirling's Artists of Spain, p. 905.) To those who are conversant with Spanish theology and art, it may seem that the distinction drawn in theory is not very definite or perceptible in practice.

At length, in July, 1615, Paul V. formally inst.i.tuted the office commemorating the Immaculate Conception, and in 1617 issued a bull forbidding any one to teach or preach a contrary opinion. "On the publication of this bull, Seville flew into a frenzy of religious joy." The archbishop performed a solemn service in the Cathedral.

Cannon roared, and bull fights, tournaments, and banquets celebrated this triumph of the votaries of the Virgin. Spain and its dependencies were solemnly placed under the protection of the "Immaculate Conception," thus personifying an abstract idea; and to this day, a Spaniard salutes his neighbour with the angelic "Ave Maria purissima!"

and he responds "Sin peccado concepida!"[1]

[Footnote 1: In our own days we have seen this curious controversy revived. One of the latest, if not the last, writer on the subject was Cardinal Lambruschini; and the last papal ordinance was promulgated by Pio Mono, and dated from Gaeta, 1849.]

I cannot find the date of the earliest picture of the Immaculate Conception; but the first writer on the art who makes allusion to the subject, and lays down specific rules from ecclesiastical authority for its proper treatment, is the Spaniard Pacheco, who must have been about forty years of age when the bull was published at Seville in 1618. It is soon after this time that we first hear of pictures of the Immaculate Conception. Pacheco subsequently became a familiar of the Inquisition, and wielded the authority of the holy office as inspector of sacred pictures; and in his "Arte de la Pintura," published in 1649, he laid down those rules for the representation which had been generally, though not always, exactly followed.

It is evident that the idea is taken from the woman in the Apocalypse, "clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." The Virgin is to be portrayed in the first spring and bloom of youth as a maiden of about twelve or thirteen years of age; with "grave sweet eyes;" her hair golden; her features "with all the beauty painting can express;" her hands are to be folded on her bosom or joined in prayer. The sun is to be expressed by a flood of light around her. The moon under her feet is to have the horns pointing downwards, because illuminated from above, and the twelve stars are to form a crown over her head. The robe must be of spotless white; the mantle or scarf blue. Round her are to hover cherubim bearing roses, palms, and lilies; the head of the bruised and vanquished dragon is to be under her feet. She ought to have the cord of St. Francis as a girdle, because in this guise she appeared to Beatriz de Silva, a n.o.ble Franciscan nun, who was favoured by a celestial vision of the Madonna in her beat.i.tude. Perhaps the good services of the Franciscans as champions of the Immaculate Conception procured them the honour of being thus commemorated.

All these accessories are not absolutely and rigidly required; and Murillo, who is ent.i.tled _par excellence_ the painter of the Conception, sometimes departed from the letter of the law without being considered as less orthodox. With him the crescent moon, is sometimes the full moon, or when a crescent the horns point upwards instead of downwards. He usually omits the starry crown, and, in spite of his predilection for the Capuchin Order, the cord of St. Francis is in most instances dispensed with. He is exact with regard to the colours of the drapery, but not always in the colour of the hair. On the other hand, the beauty and expression of the face and att.i.tude, the mingled loveliness, dignity, and purity, are given with exquisite feeling; and we are never, as in his other representations of the Madonna, reminded of commonplace homely, often peasant, portraiture; here all is spotless grace, ethereal delicacy, benignity, refinement, repose,--the very apotheosis of womanhood.

I must go back to observe, that previous to the promulgation of the famous bull of Pope Paul V., the popular ideas concerning the Immaculate Conception had left their impress on art. Before the subject had taken an express and authorized form, we find pictures which, if they do not represent it, relate to it, I remember two which cannot be otherwise interpreted, and there are probably others.

The first Is a curious picture of the early Florentine School. (Berlin Gal.) In the centre is original sin, represented by Eve and the Serpent; on the right stand St. Ambrose, St. Hilarius, St. Anselm, and St. Bernard; on the left St. Cyril, Origen, St. Augustine, and St.

Cyprian; and below are inscribed pa.s.sages from the writings of these fathers relating to the immaculate Conception of the Virgin: all of them had given to her in their works the t.i.tle of Immaculate, most pure; but they differed as to the period of her sanctification, as to whether it was in the moment of conception or at the moment of birth.

The other picture is in the Dresden Gallery, and one of the finest productions of that extraordinary Ferrarese painter Dosso Dossi. In the lower part of the picture are the four Latin Fathers, turning over their great books, or in deep meditation; behind them, the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena. Above, in a glory of light, the Virgin, clothed, not in spotless white, but a richly embroidered regal mantle, "wrought about with divers colours," kneels at the feet of the Almighty, who extends his hand in benediction. I find no account in the catalogue whence this picture was taken, but it was evidently painted for the Franciscans.

In 1617, when the Bull of Paul V. was formally expedited, Guido was attached to the papal court in quality of painter and an especial favourite with his Holiness. Among the earliest accredited pictures of the Immaculate Conception, are four of his finest works.

1. The cupola of the private chapel of the Quirinal represents the Almighty meditating the great miracle of the Immaculate Conception, and near him, within the same glory of light, is the Virgin in her white tunic, and in an att.i.tude of adoration. This was painted about 1610 or 1611, when Pope Paul V. was meditating the promulgation of his famous ordinance.

2. The great picture, also painted for Paul V., represents the doctors of the Church arguing and consulting their great books for the authorities on the subject of the Conception.[1] Above, the Virgin is seated in glory, arrayed in spotless white, her hands crossed over her bosom, and her eyes turned towards the celestial fountain of light.

Below are six doctors, consulting their books; they are not well characterized, being merely so many ideal heads in a mannered style; but I believe they represent the four Latin Fathers, with St. John Damascene and St. Ildefonso, who were especial defenders of the doctrine.

[Footnote 1: Petersburg Imp. Gal. There is a fine engraving.]

3. The next in point of date was painted for the Infanta of Spain, which I believe to be the same now in the possession of Lord Ellesmere. The figure of the Virgin, crowned with the twelve stars, and relieved from a background of golden light, is standing on a crescent sustained by three cherubs beneath; she seems to float between heaven and earth; on either side is a seraph, with hands folded and looks upraised in adoration. The whole painted in his silvery tone, with such an extreme delicacy and transparency of effect, that it might be styled "a vision of the Immaculate Conception."