Ital. La Madre di Dolore. L’Addolorata. Fr. Notre Dame de Pitié. La Vierge de Douleur. Spa. Nuestra Senora de Dolores. Ger. Die schmerzhafte Mutter. One of the most important of the devotional subjects proper to the Madonna is the “Mourning Mother,” the Mater Dolorosa, in which her character is that the mother of the crucified […]

THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST is a strictly scriptural subject. I have heard it said that the introduction of Mary was not authorized by the scripture narrative. I must observe, however, that, without any wringing of the text for an especial purpose, the passage might be so interpreted. In the first chapter of the […]

Ital. La Madonna Purissima. Lat. Regina sine labe originali concepta. Spa. Nuestra señora sin peccado concepida. La Concepcion. Fr. La Conception de la Vierge Marie. Ger. Das Geheimniss der unbefleckten Empfangniss Mari. (Dec. 8.) The last and the latest subject in which the Virgin appears alone without the Child is that entitled the “Immaculate Conception […]

Lat. Dormitio, Pausatio, Transitus, Assumptio, B. Virginis. Ital. Il Transito di Maria. Il Sonno della Beata Wirgine. L’ Assunzione. Fr. La Mort de la Vierge. L’Assomption. Ger. Das Absterben der Maria. Maria Himmelfahrt. (August 13, 15.) We approach the closing scenes. Of all the representations consecrated to the glory of the Virgin, none have been […]

Mary dwelt in the house of John upon Mount Sion, looking for the fulfilment of the promise of deliverance ; and she spent her days in visiting those places which had been hallowed by the baptism, the sufferings, the burial, and resurrection of her divine Son, but more particularly the tomb wherein he was laid. […]

LO SPASIMO. “O what avails me now that honor high, To have conceived of God, and. that salute, Hail, highly favored among women blest ! While I to sorrows am no less advanced, And fears as eminent, above the lot Of other women by the birth I bore.” “This is my favored lot, My exaltation […]

In a Holy Family of four figures, we have frequently the Virgin, the Child, and the Infant St. John, with St. Joseph standing by. Raphael’s Madonna del Passeggio is an example. In a picture by Palma Vecchio, St. John presents a lamb, while St. Joseph kneels before the Infant Christ, who, seated on his mother’s […]

“Verum stabas, optima Mater, juxta crucem Filii tui, non solum corpore, sed mentis constantia.” This great subject belongs more particularly to the Life of Christ. It is, I observe, always omitted in a series of the Life of the Virgin, unless it be the Rosary, in which the ” Vigil of the Virgin by the […]

The addition of Joseph, as a fifth figure, completes the domestic group. The introduction of the aged Zacharias renders, however, yet more full and complete, the circle of human life and human affection. We have, then, infancy, youth, maturity, and age, — difference of sex and various degrees of relationship, combined into one harmonious whole […]

THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS and the DEPOSITION are two separate themes. In the first, according to the antique formula, the Virgin should stand ; for here, as in the Crucifixion, she must be associated with the principal action, and not, by the excess of her grief, disabled from taking her part in it. In […]