Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts Part 17

As these enthroned and votive Virgins multiplied, as it became more and more a fashion to dedicate them as offerings in churches, want of s.p.a.ce, and perhaps, also, regard to expense, suggested the idea of representing the figures half-length. The Venetians, from early time the best face painters in the world, appear to have been the first to cut off the lower part of the figure, leaving the arrangement otherwise much the same. The Virgin is still a queenly and majestic creature, sitting there to be adored. A curtain or part of a carved chair represents her throne. The attendant saints are placed to the right and to the left; or sometimes the throne occupies one side of the picture, and the saints are ranged on the other. From the shape and diminished size of these votive pictures the personages, seen half-length, are necessarily placed very near to each other, and the heads nearly on a level with that of the Virgin, who is generally seen to the knees, while the Child is always full-length. In such compositions we miss the grandeur of the entire forms, and the consequent diversity of character and att.i.tude; but sometimes the beauty and individuality of the heads atone for all other deficiencies.

In the earlier Venetian examples, those of Gian Bellini particularly, there is a solemn quiet elevation which renders them little inferior, in religious sentiment, to the most majestic of the enthroned and enskied Madonnas.

There is a sacred group by Bellini, in the possession of Sir Charles Eastlake, which has always appeared to me a very perfect specimen of this cla.s.s of pictures. It is also the earliest I know of. The Virgin, pensive, sedate, and sweet, like all Bellini's Virgins, is seated in the centre, and seen in front. The Child, on her knee, blesses with his right hand, and the Virgin places hers on the head of a votary, who just appears above the edge of the picture, with hands joined in prayer; he is a fine young man with an elevated and elegant profile.

On the right are St. John the Baptist pointing to the Saviour, and St. Catherine; on the left, St. George with his banner, and St. Peter holding his book. A similar picture, with Mary Magdalene and St.

Jerome on the right, St. Peter and St. Martha on the left, is in the Leuchtenberg Gallery at Munich. Another of exquisite beauty is in the Venice Academy, in which the lovely St. Catherine wears a crown of myrtle.

Once introduced, these half-length enthroned Madonnas became very common, spreading from the Venetian states through the north of Italy; and we find innumerable examples from the best schools of art in Italy and Germany, from the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century. I shall particularize a few of these, which will be sufficient to guide the attention of the observer; and we must carefully discriminate between the sentiment proper to these half-length enthroned Madonnas, and the pastoral or domestic sacred groups and Holy Families, of which I shall have to treat hereafter.

Raphael's well-known Madonna _della Seggiola_ and Madonna _della Candelabra_, are both enthroned Virgins in the grand style, though seen half-length. In fact, the air of the head ought, in the higher schools of art, at once to distinguish a Madonna, _in trono_, even where only the head is visible.

In a Milanese picture, the Virgin and Child appear between St.

Laurence and St. John. The mannered and somewhat affected treatment is contrasted with the quiet, solemn simplicity of a group by Francia, where the Virgin and Child appear as objects of worship between St.

Dominick and St. Barbara.

The Child, standing or seated on a table or bal.u.s.trade in front, enabled the painter to vary the att.i.tude, to take the infant Christ out of the arms of the Mother, and to render his figure more prominent. It was a favourite arrangement with the Venetians; and there is an instance in a pretty picture in our National Gallery, attributed to Perugino.

Sometimes, even where the throne and the attendant saints and angels show the group to be wholly devotional and exalted, we find the sentiment varied by a touch of the dramatic,--by the introduction of an action; but it must be one of a wholly religious significance, suggestive of a religious feeling, or the subject ceases to be properly _devotional_ in character.

There is a picture by Botticelli, before which, in walking up the corridor of the Florence Gallery, I used, day after day, to make an involuntary pause of admiration. The Virgin, seated in a chair of state, but seen only to the knees, sustains her divine Son with one arm; four angels are in attendance, one of whom presents an inkhorn, another holds before her an open book, and she is in the act of writing the Magnificat, "My soul doth magnify the Lord!" The head of the figure behind the Virgin is the portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici when a boy. There is absolutely no beauty of feature, either in the Madonna, or the Child, or the angels, yet every face is full of dignity and character.

In a beautiful picture by t.i.tian (Bel. Gal., Vienna. Louvre, No.

458), the Virgin is enthroned on the left, and on the right appear St.

George and St. Laurence as listening, while St. Jerome reads from his great book. A small copy of this picture is at Windsor.

The old German and Flemish painters, in treating the enthroned Madonna, sometimes introduced accessories which no painter of the early Italian school would have descended to; and which tinge with a homely sentiment their most exalted conceptions. Thus, I have seen a German Madonna seated on a superb throne, and most elaborately and gorgeously arrayed, pressing her Child to her bosom with a truly maternal air; while beside her, on a table, is a honeycomb, some b.u.t.ter, a dish of fruit, and a gla.s.s of water. (Bel. Gal., Vienna.) It is possible that in this case, as in the Virgin suckling her Child, there may be a religious allusion:--"_b.u.t.ter and honey shall he eat_,"

&c.

THE MATER AMABILIS.

_Ital._ La Madonna col Bambino. La Madonna col celeste suo figlio.

_Fr._ La Vierge et l'enfant Jesus. _Ger._ Maria mit dem Kind.

There is yet another treatment of the Madonna and Child, in which the Virgin no longer retains the lofty G.o.ddess-like exaltation given to her in the old time. She is brought nearer to our sympathies. She is not seated in a chair of state with the accompaniments of earthly power; she is not enthroned on clouds, nor glorified and star-crowned in heaven; she is no longer so exclusively the VERGINE DEA, nor the VIRGO DEI GENITRIX; but she is still the ALMA MATER REDEMPTORIS, the young, and lovely, and most pure mother of a divine Christ. She is not sustained in mid-air by angels; she dwells lowly on earth; but the angels leave their celestial home to wait upon her. Such effigies, when conceived in a strictly ideal and devotional sense, I shall designate as the MATER AMABILIS.

The first and simplest form of this beautiful and familiar subject, we find in those innumerable half-length figures of the Madonna, holding her Child in her arms, painted chiefly for oratories, private or way-side chapels, and for the studies, libraries, and retired chambers of the devout, as an excitement to religious feeling, and a memorial of the mystery of the Incarnation, where large or grander subjects, or more expensive pictures, would be misplaced. Though unimportant in comparison with the comprehensive and magnificent church altar-pieces already described, there is no cla.s.s of pictures so popular and so attractive, none on which the character of the time and the painter is stamped more clearly and intelligibly, than on these simple representations.

The Virgin is not here the dispenser of mercy; she is simply the mother of the Redeemer. She is occupied only by her divine Son. She caresses him, or she gazes on him fondly. She presents him to the worshipper. She holds him forth with a pensive joy as the predestined offering. If the profound religious sentiment of the early masters was afterwards obliterated by the unbelief and conventionalism of later art, still this favourite subject could not be so wholly profaned by degrading sentiments and a.s.sociations, as the mere portrait heads of the Virgin alone. No matter what the model for the Madonna, might have been,--a wife, a mistress, a _contadina_ of Frascati, a Venetian _Zitella_, a _Madchen_ of Nuremberg, a buxom Flemish _Frau_,--for the Child was there; the baby innocence in her arms consecrated her into that "holiest thing alive," a mother. The theme, however inadequately treated as regarded its religious significance, was sanctified in itself beyond the reach of a profane thought. Miserable beyond the reach of hope, dark below despair, that moral atmosphere which the presence of sinless unconscious infancy cannot for a moment purify or hallow!

Among the most ancient and most venerable of the effigies of the Madonna, we find the old Greek pictures of the _Mater Amabilis_, if that epithet can be properly applied to the dark-coloured, sad-visaged Madonnas generally attributed to St. Luke, or transcripts of those said to be painted by him, which exist in so many churches, and are, or were, supposed by the people to possess a peculiar sanct.i.ty. These are almost all of oriental origin, or painted to imitate the pictures brought from the East in the tenth or twelfth century. There are a few striking and genuine examples of these ancient Greek Madonnas in the Florentine Gallery, and, nearer at hand, in the Wallerstein collection at Kensington Palace. They much resemble each other in the general treatment.

The infinite variety which painters have given to this most simple _motif_, the Mother and the Child only, without accessories or accompaniments of any kind, exceeds all possibility of cla.s.sification, either as to att.i.tude or sentiment. Here Raphael shone supreme: the simplicity, the tenderness, the halo of purity and virginal dignity, which he threw round the _Mater Amabilis_ have, never been surpa.s.sed--in his best pictures, never equalled. The "Madonna del Gran-Duca," where the Virgin holds the Child seated on her arm; the "Madonna Tempi," where she so fondly presses her check to his,--are perhaps the most remarkable for simplicity. The Madonna of the Bridgewater Gallery, where the Infant lies on her knees, and the Mother and Son look into each other's eyes; the little "Madonna Conestabile," where she holds the book, and the infant Christ, with a serious yet perfectly childish grace, bends to turn over the leaf,--are the most remarkable for sentiment.

Other Madonnas by Raphael, containing three or more figures, do not belong to this cla.s.s of pictures. They are not strictly devotional, but are properly Holy Families, groups and scenes from the domestic life of the Virgin.

With regard, to other painters before or since his time, the examples of the _Mater Amabilis_ so abound la public and private galleries, and have been so multiplied in prints, that comparison is within the reach of every observer. I will content myself with noticing a few of the most remarkable for beauty or characteristic treatment. Two painters, who eminently excelled in simplicity and purity of sentiment, are Gian Bellini of Venice, and Bernardino Luini of Milan. Squarcione, though often fantastic, has painted one or two of these Madonnas, remarkable for simplicity and dignity, as also his pupil Mantegna; though in both the style of execution is somewhat hard and cold. In the one by Fra Bartolomeo, there is such a depth of maternal tenderness in the expression and att.i.tude, we wonder where the good monk found his model. In his own heart? in his dreams? A _Mater Amabilis_ by one of the Caracci or by Vandyck is generally more elegant and dignified than tender. The Madonna, for instance, by Annibal, has something of the majestic sentiment of an enthroned Madonna. Murillo excelled in this subject; although most of his Virgins have a portrait air of common life, they are redeemed by the expression. In one of these, the Child, looking out of the picture with extended arms and eyes full of divinity, seems about to spring forth to fulfil his mission. In another he folds his little hands, and looks up to Heaven, as if devoting himself to his appointed suffering, while the Mother looks down upon him with a tender resignation. (Leuchtenberg Gal.) In a n.o.ble Madonna by Vandyck (Bridgewater Gal.), it is she herself who devotes him to do his Father's will; and I still remember a picture of this cla.s.s, by Carlo Cignani (Belvedere Gal., Vienna), which made me start, with the intense expression: the Mother presses to her the Child, who holds a cross in his baby hand; she looks up to heaven with an appealing look of love and anguish,--almost of reproach. Guido did not excel so much in children, as in the Virgin alone. Poussin, Carlo Dolce, Sa.s.so Ferrato, and, in general, all the painters of the seventeenth century, give us pretty women and pretty children. We may pa.s.s them over.

A second version of the Mater Amabilis, representing the Virgin and Child full-length, but without accessories, has been also very beautifully treated. She is usually seated in a landscape, and frequently within the mystical enclosure (_Hortus clausus_), which is sometimes in the German pictures a mere palisade of stakes or boughs.

Andrea Mantegna, though a fantastic painter, had generally some meaning in his fancies. There is a fine picture of his in which the Virgin and Child are seated in a landscape, and in the background is a stone-quarry, where a number of figures are seen busily at work; perhaps hewing the stone to build the new temple of which our Saviour was the corner-stone. (Florence Gal.) In a group by Cristofano Allori, the Child places a wreath of flowers on the brow of his Mother, holding in his other hand his own crown of thorns: one of the _fancies_ of the later schools of art.

The introduction of the little St. John into the group of the Virgin and Child lends it a charming significance and variety, and is very popular; we must, however, discriminate between the familiarity of the domestic subject and the purely religious treatment. When the Giovannino adores with folded hands, as acknowledging in Christ a superior power, or kisses his feet humbly, or points to him exulting, then it is evident that we have the two Children in their spiritual character, the Child, Priest and King, and the Child, Prophet.

In a picture by Lionardo da Vinci (Coll. of the Earl of Suffolk), the Madonna, serious and beautiful, without either crown or veil, and adorned only by her long fair hair, is seated on a rock. On one side, the little Christ, supported in the arms of an angel, raises his hand in benediction; on the other side, the young St. John, presented by the Virgin, kneels in adoration.

Where the Children are merely embracing each other, or sporting at the feet of the Virgin, or playing with the cross, or with a bird, or with the lamb, or with flowers, we might call the treatment domestic or poetical; but where St. John is taking the cross from the hand of Christ, it is clear, from the perpetual repet.i.tion of the theme, that it is intended to express a religious allegory. It is the mission of St. John as Baptist and Prophet. He receives the symbol of faith ere he goes forth to preach and to convert, or as it has been interpreted, he, in the sense used by our Lord, "takes up the cross of our Lord."

The first is, I think, the meaning when the cross is enwreathed with the _Ecce Agnus Dei_; the latter, when it is a simple cross.

In Raphael's "Madonna della Famiglia Alva," (now in the Imp. Gal., St.

Petersburg), and in his Madonna of the Vienna Gallery, Christ gives the cross to St. John. In a picture of the Lionardo school in the Louvre we have the same action; and again in a graceful group by Guido, which, in the engraving, bears this inscription, "_Qui non accipit crucem suam non est me dignus_." (Matt. x. 38.) This, of course, fixes the signification.

Another, and, as I think, a wholly fanciful interpretation, has been given to this favourite group by Treck and by Monckton Milnes. The Children contend for the cross. The little St. John begs to have it.

"Give me the cross, I pray you, dearest Jesus.

O if you knew how much I wish to have it, You would not hold it in your hand so tightly.

Something has told me, something in my breast here, Which I am sure is true, that if you keep it, If you will let no other take it from you, Terrible things I cannot bear to think of Must fall upon you. Show me that you love me: Am I not here to be your little servant, Follow your steps, and wait upon your wishes?"

But Christ refuses to yield the terrible plaything, and claims his privilege to be the elder "in the heritage of pain."

In a picture by Carlo Maratti, I think this action is evident--Christ takes the cross, and St. John yields it with reluctance.

A beautiful version of the Mater Amabilis is the MADRE PIA, where the Virgin in her divine Infant acknowledges and adores the G.o.dhead. We must be careful to distinguish this subject from the Nativity, for it is common, in the scene of the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem, to represent the Virgin adoring her new-born Child. The presence of Joseph--the ruined shed or manger--the ox and a.s.s,--these express the _event_. But in the MADRE PIA properly so called, the locality, and the accessories, if any, are purely ideal and poetical, and have no reference to time or place. The early Florentines, particularly Lorenzo di Credi, excelled in this charming subject.

There is a picture by Filippino Lippi, which appears to me eminently beautiful and poetical. Here the mystical garden is formed of a bal.u.s.trade, beyond which is seen a hedge all in a blush with roses.

The Virgin kneels in the midst, and adores her Infant, who has his finger on his lip (_Verb.u.m sum!_); an angel scatters rose-leaves over him, while the little St. John also kneels, and four angels, in att.i.tudes of adoration, complete the group.

But a more perfect example is the Madonna by Francia in the Munich Gallery, where the divine Infant lies on the flowery turf; and the mother, standing before him and looking down on him, seems on the point of sinking on her knees in a transport of tenderness and devotion. This, to my feeling, is one of the most perfect pictures in the world; it leaves nothing to be desired. With all the simplicity of the treatment it is strictly devotional. The Mother and her Child are placed within the mystical garden enclosed in a treillage of roses, alone with each other, and apart from all earthly a.s.sociations, all earthly communion.

The beautiful altar-piece by Perugino in our National Gallery is properly a Madre Pia; the child seated on a cushion is sustained by an angel, the mother kneels before him.

The famous Correggio in the Florentine Gallery is also a Madre Pia.

It is very tender, sweet, and maternal. The Child lying on part of his mother's blue mantle, so arranged that while she kneels and bends over him, she cannot change her att.i.tude without disturbing him, is a _concetto_ admired by critics in sentiment and Art; but it appears to me very inferior and commonplace in comparison to the Francia at Munich.

In a group by Botticelli, angels sustain the Infant, while the mother, seated, with folded hands, adores him: and in a favourite composition by Guido he sleeps.