MADONNA AND CHILD IN ART.
By Will H. Low.
When shepherds watched their flocks by night, and the angel appeared, bringing the tidings of good-will, a new vocation, until then unknown, was given to men. Tradition has it that one of the earliest of the followers of the Child born that night was a painter, and in the pictures of the primitive Dutch and Italian schools a not uncommon subject is St. Luke painting the Virgin and Child, while in more than one church in Europe the original(?) picture may be seen. Perhaps the most notable of these is the beautiful though quaint picture by Rogier van der Weyden, now in the Old Pinakothek, in Munich. And the tradition is a pleasant one, showing how early the services of the painters were enlisted in spreading abroad the new gospel of peace on earth.
When we consider that, even stripped of divinity, the birth of a child, its first dawning intelligence, its flower-like tenderness of aspect, are one and all motives which excite the best that is in man, there is little wonder that the Christ-child should have been and should still be the best subject that a painter could demand. In many forms, in fact, do we of a later day and of less fervent faith celebrate the beauty of mother and child. How much more ardently, therefore, in the days when faith and the painter's craft were so intimately linked, have the painters approached their task. Almost transfigured to divinity is the woman with the child at her breast that shines upon us in so many galleries; quite divine in the devout painter's thought it was as he wrought.
"Fair shines the gilded aureole
In which our highest painters place
Some living woman's simple face."
sings Rossetti; and the "highest painter," pious monk, as in the case of Fra Angelico, and stately courtier, as was Peter Paul Rubens, meet, extremes though they are, on the same ground when they approach this sacred subject. The pictures reproduced here, it may safely be said, are all celebrated, and yet they represent but a small part of the pictures of the same subject which are known to be by men of importance, and of which every museum in the world has a goodly number. If we add to these the pictures in private collections, and then take into account the tens of thousands of pictures of the same subject which, everywhere throughout the world, especially in Europe, are to be found in the churches, it is safe to say that no other subject has so often given its inspiration to the painter.
MOTHER AND CHILD. TITIAN (ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED 1576).
Nor in any other case has a subject given such variety of inspiration. The elements are few and simple, and though occasionally there are accessory figures, the concentration of interest, the reason for the existence of the picture, is centred on the Mother and Child. A survey of these pages will suffice to show that of these two principal elements a great variety of pictorial effect, of expression, of sentiment, of composition of line, and of light and shade, is possible. We can go back to the splendid Byzantine churches, with their wealth of mosaic, their subdued splendor of dulled gold covering arch and pillar as a background for the glow of color with which the artists of Constantine worked,—in a rigid convention as to form which gives their figures an impressive air, but which is ill-suited to the representation of the divine Mother and Child. Hence, in this, the earliest manifestation of Christian art, it is the remembrance of the majesty of a prophet, of the benign dignity of the mature Christ, that I we carry away with us. Giotto, however, had no sooner freed himself from the hampering conditions under which his predecessors worked, than we begin to feel the human element enter into art. Down through the centuries until to-day, the long procession of artists comes to us: those of Italy first of all, birthplace of modern art, land where time has touched everything with so reverent a hand that all has been rendered beautiful.
MADONNA AND CHILD. MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED 1682).
This legion of valiant painters enlisted in the service of "that most noble Lady and her Son, our Lord and Seigneur," have names which sound sweet to the ear, as their work is goodly to the sight. Giotto, Era Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Gentile da Fabriano, Ghirlandajo, names like the beads of a rosary, commence the list, to which Botticelli, Perugino, Raffaello Santi, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Tiziano, Veronese, and, last of all, with a name like the blast of a trumpet, the mighty Michael the Archangel, add their syllabic charm. Then the painters of more northern lands bring the tribute of their name and work; names less pleasing to the ear, as their work has less beauty to the sight, but rich, both in name and work, with honest intent and simple devotion.
MOTHER AND CHILD, MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED 1682).
First come the men whose names are those of their works or of their birthplace: Master William of Cologne, Master of the Death of Mary, Master of the Holy Companionship. Then the Van Eycks, Hubert and Jan, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Quentin Massys, Lucas van Leyden, the two Hans Holbein, elder and younger, Burgkmair, Wolgemut, and then, master of them all, Albrecht Dürer. Something of their honesty of purpose must have been mixed with their pigments, for the works of these fortunate painters of the early Dutch and German schools shine on us to-day from the gallery walls with undiminished splendor; and brave with vivid reds, with blues as rich and deep as an organ chord, and yellows rich as the gold with which they embroidered their Virgin's robes, their pictures show, with touching lapses in some of the details, a large technical mastery, coupled with an intensity of sentiment which has remained unapproachable.
HOLY FAMILY. NICOLAS POUSSIN (FRENCH: BORN 1594; DIED 1665).
MOTHER AND CHILD. LANDELLE. A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.
MOTHER AND CHILD. UNKNOWN EARLY FLEMISH PAINTER.
THE MADONNA WITH THE DIADEM. RAPHAEL (ITALIAN: BORN 1483; DIED 1520).
MOTHER AND CHILD. RUBENS (FLEMISH: BORN 1577; DIED 1640).
VIRGIN, INFANT JESUS, AND ST. JOHN. BOTTICELLI (ITALIAN: BORN 1447; DIED 1515).
THE REPOSE OF THE HOLY FAMILY. CANTARINI (ITALIAN: BORN 1612; DIED 1648).
The next of these northern painters who can claim the first rank is he who is in some respects the greatest of all from a painter's standpoint, Rembrandt van Ryn. There is little of the primitive Italian here, little of the painter who worships his Madonna through the medium of his craft as some great lady, "empress of heaven and of earth." Rembrandt's picture, lacking this mysticism, gains, however, in humanity; and however far even from our modern point of view it may be as a creation embodying the divine Motherhood, it throbs with tenderness. The homely interior, the good mother, the almost pathetic abandon of the sleeping child—surely no painter ever wrought better, nor, we may be sure, more devoutly!
MOTHER AND CHILD. P.A.J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.
MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN PAINTER.
Then the giant Peter Paul Rubens, with his facile brush, his acres of canvas, covered with the virile arabesque by which he has transmitted to us the record of a temperament so full of life that it needs no great effort of imagination, before one of his crowded canvases, to imagine the doughty Fleming back in our midst, and taking his place as Jupiter upon his painted Olympus, reawakened to life. Yet, when he in turn approaches this natal subject, his pagan brush touches the canvas lightly, and all its deftness is given to the praise of Our Lady and Our Lord. With him, as with the painters of all and differing nationalities, both Mother and Child bear the strong impress of the painter's surroundings. It is as though the miraculous birth had, by some mysterious dispensation, taken place in each of the countries of the world, the better to insure the comprehension of the message of divine love to all peoples.
HOLY FAMILY. SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (FLEMISH: BORN 1599; DIED 1641).
MOTHER AND CHILD. CARLO DOLCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1616; DIED 1686).
HOLY FAMILY. BONIFAZIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1494; DIED 1563).
MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN PAINTER.
With Van Dyck, a little later, the Child is a young patrician; the quality of the painter's imagination, influenced by his frequentation of the princes of the earth, making him conceive the young Christ as a magnificent man-child, fit to be called later to the high places of the world, a serene and noble leader.
Somewhat differently did the Italians of the great epoch of painting, Raphael, Titian, Veronese, even Bellini, who was earlier, conceive their subject. While both Mother and Child with them were merely what painters call a "bit" of painting, directly founded on close study of a living woman and child, there was always present a religious feeling, different, but almost as intense as that of the primitive Italian painters. Throughout the many Madonnas on which the fame of Raphael is founded we feel that, through a certain variety of type, the research was always the same—a desire to realize the maid-mother, and to presage, in the lineaments of the child, his future character. This sentiment, everywhere present, is approached reverently, and the too short-lived painter in his work at least utters a constant prayer. With Bellini, with Titian, and with Veronese the effort is not dissimilar, though something of the sumptuosity of Venetian life has crept in, and it is to a queen of earth as much as of heaven, and to a prince of the church temporal, that their service is rendered.
In the Spanish pictures, particularly those of earlier date than any Spanish picture reproduced here, we feel the strong impress of the Church. In the picture by Alonso Cano there looks out from the eyes of the Mother the sentiment of the cloistered nun; and though, with the Murillos, we catch a glimpse of Spain outside of the Church, even with him there is a sense of subjection from which the memories of the Inquisition are not altogether absent.
LA VIERGE AU COUSSIN VERT—MADONNA OF THE GREEN CUSHION. ANDREA DA SOLARIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1458; DIED 1530).
LA VIERGE AUX CERISES—MADONNA OF THE CHERRIES. ANNIBALE CARRACCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1560; DIED 1609).
JESUS ASLEEP. L. DESCHAMPS, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.
MOTHER AND CHILD. S.H. LYBAERT, A LIVING GERMAN PAINTER.
Our modern art has become so complex, the demands on the modern painter are so different from those which the older masters met, that our latter-day painting offers fewer examples of the Mother and Child. Dagnan-Bouveret, in France, however, has treated the subject in such a way as to show that there yet remains new presentations of the world-old theme. To-day the painter has to retain the sentiment of his subject through a network of technical difficulties, and the gracious virginal figure which Monsieur Dagnan-Bouveret has painted does this measurably well; while he has triumphed technically in painting a figure in white, lit by reflected light filtered through a network of green leaves. Another picture of the Virgin and Child, where the outline of the Child is seen through the cloak by which his mother shelters him, was exhibited not long ago in New York, and is reproduced here.
MOTHER AND CHILD. E. VAN HOVE, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.
THE HOLY NIGHT. F. ROEBER, A LIVING GERMAN PAINTER.
MOTHER AND CHILD. ITALIAN SCHOOL OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY; ARTIST UNKNOWN.
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. SPAGNOLETTO (SPANISH: BORN 1588; DIED 1656).
THE MADONNA OF THE TEMPI FAMILY. RAPHAEL (ITALIAN: BORN 1483; DIED 1520).
In Italy, sadly fallen from her former greatness in art, many painters render their service to the Church and to their ancient faith, and there are numerous pictures of the divine Mother and Child. The best of these, however, are characterized by novel arrangement of the figures rather than by any sentiment in keeping with theme—a criticism applicable also to most the modern French examples. Modern Germany gains in sentiment while losing decidedly in pictorial value, and it is a question whether it is possible, in these times, to avoid a mere repetition of what has already been so well done, and produce more than a picture which, with pictorial and technical qualities, is laboring in the messages of "peace on earth, good-will to men."
HOLY FAMILY. REMBRANDT (DUTCH: BORN 1607; DIED 1669).
MADONNA, INFANT JESUS, AND ST. JOHN. VOUET (FRENCH: BORN 1590; DIED 1649).
LA VIERGE À LA GRAPPE—MADONNA OF THE GRAPES. PIERRE MIGNARD (FRENCH: BORN 1610; DIED 1695).
LA VIERGE AU LAPIN—MADONNA OF THE RABBIT. TITIAN (ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED 1576).
THE FOND MOTHER. GABRIEL GUAY, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.
