common to all periods, all localities, all
circumstances; while in another class, the interest is not only
particular and local, but sometimes even personal.

To the first class belongs the antique and beautiful group of the
Virgin and Child, enthroned between the two great archangels, St.
Michael and St. Gabriel. It is probably the most ancient of these
combinations: we find it in the earliest Greek art, in the carved
ivory diptychs of the eighth and ninth centuries, in the old
Greco-Italian pictures, in the ecclesiastical sculpture and stained
glass of from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. In the most
ancient examples, the two angels are seen standing on each side of
the Madonna, not worshipping, but with their sceptres and attributes,
as princes of the heavenly host, attending on her who is queen of
angels; St. Gabriel as the angel of birth and life, St. Michael as
the angel of Death, that is, in the Christian sense, of deliverance
and immortality. There is an instance of this antique treatment in a
small Greek picture in the Wallerstein collection. (Now at Kensington
Palace.)

In later pictures, St. Gabriel seldom appears except as the _Angela
Annunziatore_; but St. Michael very frequently. Sometimes, as
conqueror over sin and representative of the Church militant,
he stands with his foot on the dragon with a triumphant air; or,
kneeling, he presents to the infant Christ the scales of eternal
justice, as in a famous picture by Leonardo da Vinci. It is not only
because of his popularity as a patron saint, and of the number of
churches dedicated to him, that he is so frequently introduced into
the Madonna pictures; according to the legend, he was by Divine
appointment the guardian of the Virgin and her Son while they
sojourned on earth. The angel Raphael leading Tobias always expresses
protection, and especially protection to the young. Tobias with his
fish was an early type of baptism. There are many beautiful examples.
In Raphael's "Madonna dell' Pesce" (Madrid Gal.) he is introduced as
the patron saint of the painter, but not without a reference to more
sacred meaning, that of the guardian spirit of all humanity. The
warlike figure of St. Michael, and the benign St. Raphael, are
thus represented as celestial guardians in the beautiful picture by
Perugino now in our National Gallery. (No. 288.)

There are instances of the three archangels all standing together
below the glorified Virgin: St. Michael in the