in its results, one of the
most important of the religions phenomena connected with the artistic
representations of the Virgin.[1]

[Footnote 1: We often find on pictures and prints of the Immaculate
Conception, certain scriptural texts which the theologians of the
Roman Church have applied to the Blessed Virgin; for instance, from
Ps. xliv. _Omnis gloria ejus filiae regis ab intus_--"The king's
daughter is all glorious within;" or from the Canticles, iv. 7, _Tota
pulchra es amica mea, et macula non est in te_,--"Thou art all fair,
my love, there is no spot in thee." I have also seen the texts, Ps.
xxii. 10, and Prov. viii. 22, 28, xxxi. 29, thus applied, as well as
other passages from the very poetical office of the Virgin _In Festo
Immaculatae Conceptionis_.]

We must be careful to discriminate between the Conception, so
styled by ecclesiastical authority, and that singular and mystical
representation which is sometimes called the "Predestination of Mary,"
and sometimes the "Litanies of the Virgin." Collectors and writers
on art must bear in mind, that the former, as a subject, dates only
from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the latter from
the beginning of the sixteenth. Although, as representations, so
very similar, yet the intention and meaning are different. In the
Conception it is the sinless Virgin in her personal character, who
is held up to reverence, as the purest, wisest, holiest, of created
beings. The earlier theme involves a yet more recondite signification.
It is, undoubtedly, to be regarded as an attempt on the part of the
artist to express, in a visible form, the idea or promise of the
redemption of the human race, as existing in the Sovereign Mind before
the beginning of things. They do not personify this idea under the
image of Christ,--for they conceived that, as the second person of the
Trinity, he could not be his own instrument,--but by the image of Mary
surrounded by those attributes which were afterwards introduced into
the pictures of the Conception: or setting her foot, as second Eve, on
the head of the prostrate serpent. Not seldom, in a series of subjects
from the Old Testament, the _pendant_ to Eve holding the apple is Mary
crushing the head of the fiend; and thus the "bane and antidote are
both before us." This is the proper interpretation of those effigies,
so prevalent in every form of art during the sixteenth century, and
which are often, but erroneously, styled the Immacul