Category: The Madonna

Ital. La Nozze di Cana. Fr. Les Noces de Cana. Ger. Die Hochzeit zu Cana. After his temptation and baptism, the first manifestation of the divine mission and miraculous power of Jesus was at the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee ; and those who had devoted themselves to the especial glorification of the Virgin-mother […]

Ital. Il Riposo. Fr. Le Repos de la Sainte Famille. Ger. Die Ruhe in Egypten. The subject generally styled a ” Riposo ” is one of the most graceful and most attractive in the whole range of Christian Art. It is not, however, an ancient subject, for I cannot recall an instance earlier than the […]

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 […]

Although the Feast of the Visitation is fixed for the 2nd of July, it was, and is, a received opinion, that Mary began her journey to the hill country but a short time, even a few days, after the annunciation of the angel. It was the sixth month with Elizabeth, and Mary sojourned with her […]

Ital. Il Presepio. Il Nascimento del Nostro Signore. Fr. La Nativité. Ger. Die Geburt Christi. (Dec. 25.) The birth of our Saviour is related with characteristic simplicity and brevity in the Gospels ; but in the early Christian traditions this great event is preceded and accompanied by several circumstances which have assumed a certain importance […]

In the first sense, the artist has intended simply to express the advent of the Divinity on earth in the form of an infant, and the motif is clearly taken from a text in the Office of the Virgin, ” Virgo quem genuit adoravit.” In the beautiful words of Jeremy Taylor, ” She blessed him, […]