Second Brother. What hidden strength,
Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?
First Brother. I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength
Which, if Heaven gave it, may be term'd her own.
'Tis Chastity, my brother, Chastity;
She that has that, is clad in complete steel.
1199. MADONNA AND CHILD.
Unknown (Florentine: 15th Century).
See also (p. xxi)
On the right is St. John; on the left an angel crowned with a chaplet of roses and bearing the annunciation lily. Notice that the frame ornamented with modelled stucco forms part of the picture, and is indeed part of the same panel.
1200, 1201. GROUPS OF SAINTS.
Macrino d'Alba (Lombard: about 1470-1528).
Macrino was born at Alba in Piedmont. "There is no foundation for the belief that his name was Giangiacomo Fava. His early Lombard training was considerably modified by a visit to Rome, and a study of the Florentine masters and Ghirlandajo's influence is to be seen in his work. His pictures are easily recognisable from the frequent recurrence of similar types and attitudes" (Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club's Exhibition, 1898, p. lxxvii.). The dates on his works range from 1496 to 1508. They are to be found in the Certosa of Pavia, at Alba, and in the Turin Gallery. He belongs to the pre-Leonardo school of Lombardy, and was perhaps a pupil of Vincenzo Foppa (729).
In the first group (1200) are St. Peter Martyr (for whom see 812), with the knife and plenty of blood on his head, and a bishop in full robes. In the second (1201), St. Thomas Aquinas looking with an almost comic squint at a crucifix, and John the Baptist. On the pages of St. Thomas's book are the words in Latin, "I have kept the commandments of my father"; on those of St John the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world."