Any one of these various types of Madonna may also be modified by the introduction of a kneeling donor. Thus, Van Eyck’s glowing picture of the Chancellor Rollin adoring Our Lady is an example of the simple Madonna and Child, enthroned, accompanied by the donor; though in this case, the composition is further slightly enriched by the dainty little floating angel in the background, who places an exquisitely jewelled crown of the finest Flemish workmanship on the head of the Virgin. The Madonna della Vittoria, again, which we have so fully considered, is essentially a Madonna and Saints, with the kneeling donor. In very early pictures, you will observe that the donors are often painted grotesquely small, while Our Lady and the Saints are of relatively superhuman stature, to mark their superiority as heavenly personages. In later works, this absurdity dies out, and the figure and face of the donor become one of the recognised excuses for early portrait painting. Indeed, portraiture took its rise for the modern world from such kneeling figures.
Another point of view from which it is interesting to compare these various Madonnas is that of the Nationality or School of Art to which they belong. The early Italian representations of Our Lady are usually more or less girlish in appearance, refined in features, and comparatively simple in dress and decoration. The Flemish type is peculiarly insipid, one might often say, even with great artists, inane and meaningless; in the hands of minor painters, it becomes positively wooden. The face here is long and rather thin; the features peaky. The Madonna of Flemish art, indeed, like the Christ of all art, is a sacred type which is seldom varied. Early French Madonnas, once more, are regal and ladylike, sometimes even courtly. They wear crowns as queens, and are better observed in the Louvre in sculpture than in painting. This Gallery hardly suffices to note in full the peculiarities of the sub-types in various Italian schools; but they may still be recognised. Of these, the Florentine are spiritual, delicate, and strongly ideal; the Lombard, intellectual, like well-read ladies; the Venetian, stately and matronly oligarchical mothers, degenerating later into the mere aristocratic nobility, soulless and materialised, of Titian and his followers. The Umbrians and Sienese are distinguished for the most part by their pure and saintly air of fervent piety.
Do not confound with any of these devotional Madonnas, with or without select groups of saints, various other classes of picture which somewhat resemble them. Each of these has in early art its own proper convention and treatment: it was a recognised species. A Holy Family, for example, consists, as a rule, of a Madonna, the Infant Christ, St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and the child Baptist. Like the other subjects, it is sometimes complicated by the addition of selected Saints as spectators or assessors. A Coronation of the Virgin, again, is an entirely celestial scene, taking place in the calm of the heavenly regions. The Madonna is usually crowned by her Son, but sometimes by angels or by the Eternal Father. (Several interesting examples of this, for comparison, occur in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.) Nativities, of course, belong rather to the group of pictorial histories, such as the Life of Christ, or the Seven Joys of Mary. The sculptures in the ambulatory at Notre-Dame give one a good idea of such continuous histories.
One interesting set of Madonnas, largely exemplified here, to take a particular example, is the later Lombard type of the School of Leonardo. This type, well distinguished by its regular oval features, its gentle smile of inner happiness, and its peculiar waving hair with wisps over the shoulders, is usually regarded as essentially belonging to Leonardo himself and his immediate followers. It is foreshadowed, however, by Foppa, Borgognone, and other early Lombard painters, specimens of whom are not numerous in the Louvre. Leonardo, when he came to Milan to Ludovico Sforza, adopted this local type, which he transfused with Florentine grace and with his own peculiar subdued smile, as one sees it already in the Mona Lisa. From Leonardo, again, it was taken, with more or less success, by his immediate pupils, Beltraffio, Solario, Cesare di Sesto, and others, as well as by Luini, who was not a pupil of Leonardo himself, but who was deeply influenced by the master’s methods and his works in Milan. The number of these Leonardesque Madonnas in the Louvre is exceptionally great, while Leonardo himself can here be better estimated than in Italy. Nowhere else perhaps, save possibly at Milan, can this type as a whole be compared by the student to so great advantage.
While the Madonna herself usually occupies the central panel of votive pictures, it sometimes happens that some other saint is, on his own altar-piece, similarly enthroned; and in that case he is flanked by brother saints, often more important in themselves, but then and there subordinated to him. This special honour under special circumstances is well seen in the case of the St. Lawrence at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs. Particular local saints often thus receive what might otherwise appear undue recognition. For the same reason, minor saints in the group surrounding a Madonna often obtain local brevet-rank (if I may be allowed the simile) over others of far greater general dignity, which they could not lay claim to in any other connection. Thus, in the Nativity by Giulio Romano, to which I called attention in connection with Mantegna’s Madonna, St. Longinus (with his crystal vase) stood on Our Lady’s R, while St. John was relegated to her L—a subordination of the greater to the lesser saint which would only be possible in a chapel actually dedicated to St. Longinus, and where he receives peculiar honour. I now propose to escort you round a few rooms of the Louvre, again calling attention very briefly, from this point of view, to certain special Madonna features only.]
Now, go to the Louvre and test these remarks. Begin at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs. The Cimabue and the Giottesque of the Madonna and Angels we have already considered. Compare them again from our present standpoint. Close to them on the R, beneath the large Giotto of St. Francis, are two pretty little Madonnas, 1620 (I now give the large upper numbers alone) and 1667. The first of these exhibits below two tiny votaries—the small-sized donors—a Franciscan monk and a Dominican nun, with the robes of their orders; the centre consists of St. Paul and St. Catherine, as the attendant saints on the large Enthroned Virgin. The second has the choir of angels, both surrounding and beneath the throne, with St. Peter (keys), St. Paul (sword), St. John Baptist (camel-hair) and St. Stephen or St. Vincent (robed as deacon). St. Peter and St. Paul in 1625 are similar figures, once surrounding a central panel, with the Madonna now missing. Compare with this 1666, with its Enthroned Madonna of the early almond-eyed type, its group of angels round the throne, and its two saints at the base, John Baptist and Peter. Observe that the types of these also can be recognised. Each saint has regular features of his own, which you can learn to know quite as well as the symbols.
Higher up, 1664, another Madonna and Child, Enthroned, with similar angels, but with the addition of the figure of St Catherine of Alexandria, on whose finger the Christ is placing a ring. This is an early intermediate type of the Marriage of St. Catherine, hardly yet characterized. Most of these Madonnas have the characteristic softness and peculiar cast of countenance of the early School of Siena.
1279, Gentile da Fabriano, is almost a simple Madonna and Child, but for the addition of the smaller donor, Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. This picture shows the bland and round-faced Umbrian type which is closely allied to that of Siena. Both Schools are remarkable for the fervent pietism which blossomed out in full in St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena.
In the beautiful Perugino above, 1564, note the complete transformation in the later Umbrian school of the adoring angels into a graceful pair, and the beginning of an attempt to group in comparatively natural attitudes the accompanying saints, Rose and Catherine.