Category: The Madonna

After the marriage at Cana in Galilee, which may be regarded as the commencement of the miraculous mission of our Lord, we do not hear anything of his Mother, the Virgin, till the time approached when he was to close his ministry by his death. She is not once referred to by name in the […]

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 […]

“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 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 […]

THE DEPOSITION is properly that moment which succeeds the DESCENT from the Cross ; when the dead form of Christ is deposed or laid upon the ground, resting on the lap of his Mother, and lamented by St. John, the Magdalene, and others. The ideal and devotional form of this subject, styled a Pietà, may […]

The ENTOMBMENT follows, and when treated as a strictly historical scene, the Virgin Mother is always introduced, though here as a less conspicuous figure, and one less important to the action. Either she swoons, which is the ancient Greek conception : or she follows, with streaming eyes and clasped hands, the pious disciples who bear […]

The group of three figures most commonly met with is that of the Mother and Child with St. John. One of the earliest examples of the domestic treatment of this group is a quaint picture by Botticelli, in which Mary, bending down, holds forth the Child to be caressed by St. John—very dry in color, […]

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 […]

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 […]

In a composition by Parmigiano, Christ is standing at his mother’s knee ; Elizabeth presents St. John the Baptist; the other little St. John kneels on a cushion. Behind the Virgin are St. Joachim and St. Anna ; and behind Elizabeth, Zebedee and Mary Salome, the parents of St. John the Evangelist. In the centre, […]