-"St. Marie-la-bonne"]

* * * * *

Brief and inadequate as are these introductory notices, they will, I
hope, facilitate the comprehension of the critical details into which
it has been necessary to enter in the following pages, and lend some
new interest to the subjects described. I have heard the artistic
treatment of the Madonna styled a monotonous theme; and to those who
see only the perpetual iteration of the same groups on the walls of
churches and galleries, varied as they may suppose only by the fancy
of the painter, it may seem so. But beyond the visible forms, there
lies much that is suggestive to a thinking mind--to the lover of Art
a higher significance, a deeper beauty, a more various interest, than
could at first be imagined.

In fact, the greatest mistakes in point of _taste_ arise in general
from not knowing what we ought to demand of the artist, not only in
regard to the subject expressed, but with reference to the times in
which he lived, and his own individuality. An axiom which I have heard
confidently set forth, that a picture is worth nothing unless "he who
runs may read," has inundated the world with frivolous and pedantic
criticism. A picture or any other work of Art, is worth nothing except
in so far as it has emanated from mind, and is addressed to mind. It
should, indeed, be _read_ like a book. Pictures, as it has been well
said, are the books of the unlettered, but then we must at least
understand the language in which they are written. And further,--if,
in the old times, it was a species of idolatry to regard these
beautiful representations as endued with a specific sanctity and
power; so, in these days, it is a sort of atheism to look upon them
reckless of their significance, regardless of the influences through
which they were produced, without acknowledgment of the mind which
called them into being, without reference to the intention of the
artist in his own creation.

* * * * *

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I.

In the first edition of this work, only a passing allusion was made to
those female effigies, by some styled "_la donna orante_" (the Praying
Woman) and by others supposed to represent Mary the Mother of our
Lord, of which so many examples exist in the Catacombs and in the
sculptured groups on the ancient Christian sarcophagi. I know it has
long been a disputed, or at least an unsettled and dou