In which our highest painters place
Some living woman's simple face."
sings Rossetti; and the "highest painter," pious monk, as in the case of Fra Angelico, and stately courtier, as was Peter Paul Rubens, meet, extremes though they are, on the same ground when they approach this sacred subject. The pictures reproduced here, it may safely be said, are all celebrated, and yet they represent but a small part of the pictures of the same subject which are known to be by men of importance, and of which every museum in the world has a goodly number. If we add to these the pictures in private collections, and then take into account the tens of thousands of pictures of the same subject which, everywhere throughout the world, especially in Europe, are to be found in the churches, it is safe to say that no other subject has so often given its inspiration to the painter.
MOTHER AND CHILD. TITIAN (ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED 1576).
Nor in any other case has a subject given such variety of inspiration. The elements are few and simple, and though occasionally there are accessory figures, the concentration of interest, the reason for the existence of the picture, is centred on the Mother and Child. A survey of these pages will suffice to show that of these two principal elements a great variety of pictorial effect, of expression, of sentiment, of composition of line, and of light and shade, is possible. We can go back to the splendid Byzantine churches, with their wealth of mosaic, their subdued splendor of dulled gold covering arch and pillar as a background for the glow of color with which the artists of Constantine worked,—in a rigid convention as to form which gives their figures an impressive air, but which is ill-suited to the representation of the divine Mother and Child. Hence, in this, the earliest manifestation of Christian art, it is the remembrance of the majesty of a prophet, of the benign dignity of the mature Christ, that I we carry away with us. Giotto, however, had no sooner freed himself from the hampering conditions under which his predecessors worked, than we begin to feel the human element enter into art. Down through the centuries until to-day, the long procession of artists comes to us: those of Italy first of all, birthplace of modern art, land where time has touched everything with so reverent a hand that all has been rendered beautiful.
MADONNA AND CHILD. MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED 1682).
This legion of valiant painters enlisted in the service of "that most noble Lady and her Son, our Lord and Seigneur," have names which sound sweet to the ear, as their work is goodly to the sight. Giotto, Era Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Gentile da Fabriano, Ghirlandajo, names like the beads of a rosary, commence the list, to which Botticelli, Perugino, Raffaello Santi, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Tiziano, Veronese, and, last of all, with a name like the blast of a trumpet, the mighty Michael the Archangel, add their syllabic charm. Then the painters of more northern lands bring the tribute of their name and work; names less pleasing to the ear, as their work has less beauty to the sight, but rich, both in name and work, with honest intent and simple devotion.
