HE pictures of the Madonna, or Virgin Mary, may be divided into two classes; the devotional, which illustrate the doctrines or teaching of the early Church, and the historical, or the representation of the actual scenes in the life of the Mother of Christ.
When the Virgin is represented wearing a crown or bearing a sceptre, and attended by worshipping angels, she is in the character of the Queen of Angels. The earlier examples of these pictures, as seen in the Florentine Academy, and in the Churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce in Florence, are charming in their simplicity, and represent a majestic and mystical womanhood, which entitles them to consideration as works of Art. But later, especially in the seventeenth century, these pictures degenerated into portraits of the self-conscious, unintelligent prettiness of the models from whom they were painted. This subject was a favorite one with certain decadent artists, and the contrast between the most ancient and the later pictures of it, gives one a strong impression of the lack of reverence or ideality in men who could thus represent that holy woman, whose heart found expression in her beautiful hymn, beginning, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” St. Luke i., 46. These pictures have neither the humility, the intellectual power, nor the sublime faith which the face of the Virgin Mary should express.
A favorite devotional picture was the
Francesco Granacci.—The Virgin and Angels.
Coronation of the Virgin. This representation is an emblem of the Church Triumphant, and is one of the most beautiful, as it was one of the most approved, of the Middle Ages. It appeals to all hearts, since it pictures the reunion of the Mother and Son in heaven, after their separation by his death, and shows him no longer despised and rejected, but reigning in the fullness of power, and exalting his mother above men and angels, welcoming her to his throne, and placing a glorious crown upon her head.
In the most ancient Coronations, which are very interesting, no angels appear. From the time of Giotto,—the beginning of the fourteenth century,—however, angels were witnesses of this scene. Fra Angelico’s Coronation, in the Louvre, in which the Virgin kneels to be crowned, has a group of musical angels on each side. One of the most interesting pictures of this subject that I have seen is in the Academy of Venice, by Vivarini, an artist of the island of Murano, who lived in the fifteenth century.