All through Lombardy and Piedmont, St. Ambrose of Milan and St.
Maurice of Savoy are favourite attendants on the Virgin.
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In Spanish and Flemish art, the usual attendants on the queenly Madonna are monks and nuns, which brings us to the consideration of a large and interesting class of pictures, those dedicated by the various religious orders. When we remember that the institution of some of the most influential of these communities was coeval with the revival of art; that for three or four centuries, art in all its forms had no more powerful or more munificent patrons; that they counted among their various brotherhoods some of the greatest artists the world has seen; we can easily imagine how the beatified members of these orders have become so conspicuous as attendants on the celestial personages. To those who are accustomed to read the significance of a work of art, a single glance is often sufficient to decide for what order it has been executed.
St. Paul is a favourite saint of the Benedictine communities; and there are few great pictures painted for them in which he does not appear. When in companionship with St. Benedict, either in the original black habit or the white habit of the reformed orders, with St. Scholastica bearing her dove, with St. Bernard, St. Romualdo, or other worthies of this venerable community, the interpretation is easy.
Here are some examples by Domenico Puligo. The Virgin not seated, but standing on a lofty pedestal, looks down on her worshippers; the Child in her arms extends the right hand in benediction; with his left he points to himself, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." Around are six saints, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John the Baptist as protector of Florence, St. Matthew, St. Catherine; and St. Bernard, in his ample white habit, with his keen intellectual face, is about to write in a great book, and looking up to the Virgin for inspiration. The picture was originally painted for the Cistercians.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is now in the S. Maria-Maddalena de' Pazzi at
Florence. Engraved in the "Etruria Pittrice," xxxv.]
The Virgin and Child enthroned between St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica, as in a fine picture by Florigerio (Venice Acad.), would show the picture to be painted for one of the numerous branches of the Augustine Order. St. Antony the abbot is a favourite saint in pictures painted for the Augustine hermits.
In the "Madonna del Baldachino" of Raphael, the beardless saint who stands in a white habit on one side of the throne is usually styled St. Bruno; an evident mistake. It is not a Carthusian, but a Cistercian monk, and I think St. Bernard, the general patron of monastic learning. The other attendant saints are St. Peter, St. James, and St. Augustine. The picture was originally painted for the church of San Spirito at Florence, belonging to the Augustines.
But St. Augustine is also the patriarch of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and frequently takes an influential place in their pictures, as the companion either of St. Francis or of St. Dominick, as in a picture by Fra Angelico. (Florence Gal.)
Among the votive Madonnas of the mendicant orders, I will mention a few conspicuous for beauty and interest, which will serve as a key to others.