xquisite
miniature representation in the possession of Lord Overston, not more
than fifteen inches in height. Lord Lansdowne has also a beautiful
small "Conception," very simply treated. In those which have dark
hair, Murillo is said to have taken his daughter Francisca as a model.
The number of attendant angels varies from one or two, to thirty. They
bear the palm, the olive, the rose, the lily, the mirror; sometimes
a sceptre and crown. I remember but few instances in which he has
introduced the dragon-fiend, an omission which Pacheco is willing to
forgive; "for," as he observes, "no man ever painted the devil with
good-will."

In the Louvre picture (No. 1124), the Virgin is adored by three
ecclesiastics. In another example, quoted by Mr. Stirling (Artists
of Spain, p. 839), a friar is seen writing at her feet: this figure
probably represents her champion, the friar Duns Scotus. There is
at Hampton Court a picture, by Spagnoletto, of this same Duns Scotus
writing his defence of the Immaculate Conception. Spagnoletto was
painting at Naples, when, in 1618, "the Viceroy solemnly swore, in
presence of the assembled multitude, to defend with his life the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception;" and this picture, curious
and striking in its way, was painted about the same time.

* * * * *

In Italy, the decline of Art in the seventeenth century is nowhere
more apparent, nor more offensive, than in this subject. A finished
example of the most execrable taste is the mosaic in St. Peter's,
after Pietro Bianchi. There exists, somewhere, a picture of the
Conception, by Le Brun, in which the Virgin has no other drapery
than a thin, transparent gauze, and has the air of a Venus Meretrix.
In some old French prints, the Virgin is surrounded by a number of
angels, defending her with shield and buckler against demons who are
taking aim at her with fiery arrows. Such, and even worse, vagaries
and perversities, are to be found in the innumerable pictures of this
favourite subject, which inundated the churches between 1640 and 1720.
Of these I shall say no more. The pictures of Guido and Murillo, and
the carved figures of Alonzo Cano, Montanez, and Hernandez, may
be regarded as authorized effigies of "Our Lady of the most pure
Conception;" in other words, as embodying, in the most attractive,
decorous, and intelligible form, an abstract theological dogma, which
is in itself one of the most curious, and,