Childhood in literature and art, with some observations on literature for children

by Horace Elisha Scudder

III

Whatever light the treatment of the Madonna subject may throw upon the ages in which it is uppermost in men’s thoughts, the common judgment is sound which looks for the most significance in the works of Raphael. Even those who turn severely away from him, and seek for purer art in his predecessors, must needs use his name as one of epochal consequence. So many forces of the age meet in Raphael, who was peculiarly open to influences, that no other painter can so well be chosen as an exponent of the idea of the time; and as one passes in review the successive Madonnas, one may not only detect the influence of Perugino, of Leonardo, of Michelangelo, and other masters, but may see the ripening of a mind, upon which fell the spirit of the age, busy with other things than painting.

Of the early Madonnas of Raphael, it is noticeable how many present the Virgin engaged in reading a book, while the child is occupied in other ways, sometimes even seeking to interrupt the mother and disengage her attention. Thus in one in the Berlin museum, which is formal, though unaffected, Mary reads a book, while the child plays with a goldfinch; in the Madonna in the Casa Connestabile, at Perugia, the child plays with the leaves of the book; in the Madonna del Cardellino, the little S. John presents a goldfinch to Jesus, and the mother looks away from her book to observe the children; in that at Berlin, which is from the Casa Colonna, the child is held on the mother’s knee in a somewhat struggling attitude, and has his left hand upon the top of her dress, near her neck, his right upon her shoulder, while the mother, with a look of maternal tenderness, holds the book aside. In the middle period of Raphael’s work this motive appears once at least in the St. Petersburg Madonna, which is a quiet landscape-scene, where the child is in the Madonna’s lap: she holds a book, which she has just been reading; the little S. John kneels before his divine companion with infantine grace, and offers him a cross, which he receives with a look of tender love; the Madonna’s eyes are directed to the prophetic play of the children with a deep, earnest expression.

The use of the book is presumably to denote the Madonna’s piety; and in the earlier pictures she is not only the object of adoration to the worshipper, who sees her in her earthly form, yet endowed with sinless grace, but the object also of interest to the child, who sees in her the mother. This reciprocal relation of mother and child is sometimes expressed with great force, as in the Madonna della Casa Tempi, in the Pinacothek at Munich, where the Virgin, who is standing, tenderly presses the child’s head against her face, while he appears to whisper words of endearment. In these and other of the earlier Madonnas of Raphael, there is an enthusiasm, and a dreamy sentiment which seems to seek expression chiefly through the representation of holy womanhood, the child being a part of the interpretation of the mother. The mystic solemnity of the subject is relieved by a lightness of touch, which was the irrepressible assertion of a strong human feeling.

Later, in what is called his middle period, a cheerfulness and happy contemplation of life pervade Raphael’s work, as in the Bridgewater Madonna, where the child, stretched in the mother’s lap, looks up with a graceful and lively action, and fixes his eyes upon her in deep thought, while she looks back with maternal, reverent joy. The Madonna of the Chair illustrates the same general sentiment, where the mother appears as a beautiful and blooming woman, looking out of the picture in the tranquil enjoyment of motherly love; the child, full and strong in form, leans upon her bosom in a child’s careless attitude, the picture of trust and content.

The works of Raphael’s third period, and those executed by his pupils in a spirit and with a touch which leave them sometimes hardly distinguishable from the master’s, show a profounder penetration of life, and at the same time a firmer, more reasonable apprehension of the divinity which lies inclosed in the subject. Mary is now something more than a young man’s dream of virginal purity and maternal tenderness,—she is also the blessed among women; the infant Christ is not only the innocent, playful child, but the prophetic soul, conscious of his divinity and his destiny. These characteristics pervade both the treatment which regards them as historic personages and that which invests them with adorable attributes as having their throne in heaven. The Holy Family is interpreted in a large, serious, and dignified manner, and in the exalted, worshipped Madonna there is a like vision of things eternal seen through the human form.

To illustrate this an example may be taken of each class. The Madonna del Passegio, in the Bridgewater gallery, is a well-known composition, which represents the Madonna and child walking through a field; Joseph is in advance, and has turned to look for the others. They have been stopped by the infant S. John Baptist, clad in a rough skin, who presses eagerly forward to kiss Jesus. The mother places a restraining hand upon the shoulders of S. John, and half withdraws the child Jesus from his embrace. A classic grace marks Jesus, who looks steadfastly into the eyes of the impassioned John. The three figures in the principal group are conceived in a noble manner: S. John, prophesying in his face the discovery of the Lamb of God; Mary, looking down with a sweet gravity which marks the holy children, and would separate Jesus as something more than human from too close fellowship with John; Jesus himself, a picture of glorious childhood, with a far-reaching look in his eye, as he gently thrusts back the mother with one hand, and with the other lays hold of the cross which John bears.

On the other hand, an example of the treatment of the adorable Madonna is that of San Sisto, in the Dresden gallery. It is not necessary to dwell on the details of a picture which rises at once to every one’s mind. The circumstance of innumerable angels’ heads, of the attendant S. Sixtus and S. Barbara, the sweep of cloud and drapery, the suggestion of depths below and of heights above, of heaven itself listening at the Madonna’s feet,—all these translate the mother and babe with ineffable sweetness and dignity into a heavenly place, and make them the centre of the spiritual universe. Yet in all this Raphael has rested his art in no elaborate use of celestial machinery. He has taken the simple, elemental relation, and invested it with its eternal properties. He gives not a supernatural and transcendent mother and child, but a glorified humanity. Therefore it is that this picture, and with it the other great Madonnas of Raphael, may be taken entirely away from altar and sanctuary, and placed in the shrine of the household. The universality of the appeal is seen in the unhesitating adoption of the Sistine Madonna as an expression of religious art by those who are even antagonistic to the church which called it forth.