Author: adminyo

Before quitting the subject of the Riposo, I must mention a very pretty and poetical legend which I have met with in one picture only : a description of it may, however, lead to the recognition of others. There [was] in the collection of Lord Shrewsbury, at Alton Towers, a Riposo attributed to Giorgione, remarkable […]

Of the various titles given to the Virgin Mary, and thence to certain effigies and pictures of her, some appear to me very touching, as expressive of the wants, the aspirations, the infirmities and sorrows, which are common to poor suffering humanity, or of those divine attributes from which they hope to find aid and […]

According to some authorities, the Holy Family sojourned in Egypt during a period of seven years, but others assert that they returned to Judea at the end of two years. In general, the painters have expressed the Return from Egypt by exhibiting Jesus as no longer an infant sustained in his mother’s arms, but as […]

WHEN the Holy Family, under divine protection, had returned safely from their sojourn in Egypt, they were about to repair to Bethlehem ; but Joseph hearing that Archelaus “did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither : and being warned of God in a dream, he […]

The simplest form of the family group is confined to two figures, and expresses merely the relation between the Mother and the Child. The motif is precisely the same as in the formal, goddess-like, enthroned Madonnas of the antique time ; but here quite otherwise worked out, and appealing to other sympathies. In the first […]

Ital. La Madonna col Bambino. La Madonna col celeste suo Figlio. Fr. La Vierge et l’Enfant Jésus. Ger. Maria mit dem Kind. There is yet another treatment of the Madonna and Child, in which the Virgin no longer retains the lofty goddess-like exaltation given to her in the old time. She is brought nearer to […]

From the life of the Virgin in the temple we have several beautiful pictures. As she was to be placed before women as an example of every virtue, so she was skilled in all feminine accomplishments ; she was as studious, as learned, as wise, as she was industrious, chaste, and temperate. She is seen […]

Considering the importance given to the Annunciation in its mystical sense, it is strange that we do not find it among the very ancient symbolical subjects adopted in the first ages of Christian Art. It does not appear on the sarcophagi, nor in the early Greek carvings and diptychs, nor in the early mosaics — […]

Had the Annunciation to Mary been merely mentioned as an awful and incomprehensible vision, it would have been better to have adhered to the mystical style of treatment, or left it alone altogether ; but the Scripture history, by giving the whole narration as a simple fact, a real event, left it free for representation […]

Ital. La Visitazione di Maria. Fr. La Visitation de la Vierge. Ger. Die Heimsuchung Maria. (July 2.) After the annunciation of the angel, the Scripture goes on to relate how ” Mary arose and went up into the hill country with haste, to the house of her cousin Elizabeth, and saluted her.” This meeting of […]