Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts

by Mrs. Jameson

There is yet another version of this subject, which deserves notice from the fantastic grace of the conception. As in early Christian Art, our Saviour was frequently portrayed as the Good Shepherd, so, among the later Spanish fancies, we find his Mother represented as the Divine Shepherdess. In a picture painted by Alonzo Miguel de Tobar (Madrid Gal. 226), about the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find the Virgin Mary seated under a tree, in guise of an Arcadian pastorella, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, encircled by a glory, a crook in her hand, while she feeds her flock with the mystical roses. The beauty of expression in the head of the Virgin is such as almost to redeem the quaintness of the religious conceit; the whole picture is described as worthy of Murillo. It was painted for a Franciscan church at Madrid, and the idea became so popular, that we find it multiplied and varied in French and German prints of the last century; the original picture remains unequalled for its pensive poetical grace; but it must be allowed that the idea, which at first view strikes from its singularity, is worse than questionable in point of taste, and will hardly bear repetition.

There are some ex-voto pictures of the Madonna of Mercy, which record individual acts of gratitude. One, for instance, by Nicolò Alunno (Rome, Pal. Colonna), in which the Virgin, a benign and dignified creature, stretches forth her sceptre from above, and rebukes the ugly fiend of Sin, about to seize a boy. The mother kneels on one side, with eyes uplifted, in faith and trembling supplication. The same idea I have seen repeated in a picture by Lanfranco.

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The innumerable votive pictures which represent the Madonna di
Misericordia with the Child in her arms, I shall notice hereafter.
They are in Catholic countries the usual ornaments of charitable
Institutions and convents of the Order of Mercy; and have, as I cannot
but think, a very touching significance.

THE MATER DOLOROSA.

Ital. La Madre di Dolore. L' Addolorata. Fr. Nôtre Dame da Pitié. La Vierge de Douleur. Sp. Nuestra Señora de Dolores Ger. Die Schmerzhafte Mutter.

One of the most important of these devotional subjects proper to the Madonna is the "Mourning Mother," the Mater Dolorosa, in which her character is that of the mother of the crucified Redeemer; the mother of the atoning Sacrifice; the queen of martyrs; the woman whose bosom was pierced with a sharp sword; through whose sorrow the world was saved, whose anguish was our joy, and to whom the Roman Catholic Christians address their prayers as consoler of the afflicted, because she had herself tasted of the bitterest of all earthly sorrow, the pang of the agonized mother for the loss of her child.

In this character we have three distinct representations of the
Madonna.

MATER DOLOROSA. In the first she appears alone, a seated or standing figure, often the head or half length only; the hands clasped, the head bowed in sorrow, tears streaming from the heavy eyes, and the whole expression intensely mournful. The features are properly those of a woman in middle age; but in later times the sentiment of beauty predominated over that of the mother's agony; and I have seen the sublime Mater Dolorosa transformed into a merely beautiful and youthful maiden, with such an air of sentimental grief as might serve for the loss of a sparrow.

Not so with the older heads; even those of the Carracci and the
Spanish school have often a wonderful depth of feeling.