176. ST. JOHN AND THE LAMB.
Murillo (Spanish: 1618-1682). See 13.
An interesting illustration of the substitution of the palpable image for the figurative phrase. The mission of St. John the Baptist was to prepare the way for Christ, to proclaim to the people "Behold the Lamb of God!" Murillo makes the standard of the Lamb, with those words upon it, lie upon the ground below; but he further represents the young St. John as embracing an actual lamb.
177. THE MAGDALEN.
Guido (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.
Just such a picture as might have suggested the lines in Pope's epistle on "The Characters of Women"—
Let then the fair one beautifully cry,
In Magdalen's loose hair and lifted eye;
Or dress'd in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine,
With simpering angels, palms, and harps divine;
Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it,
If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.
Just such a picture, too, as Guido turned out in numbers. "He was specially fond," says one of his biographers, "of depicting faces with upraised looks, and he used to say that he had a hundred different modes" of thus supplying sentimentality to order.