ione, though
often fantastic, has painted one or two of these Madonnas, remarkable
for simplicity and dignity, as also his pupil Mantegna; though in
both the style of execution is somewhat hard and cold. In the one by
Fra Bartolomeo, there is such a depth of maternal tenderness in the
expression and attitude, we wonder where the good monk found his
model. In his own heart? in his dreams? A _Mater Amabilis_ by one of
the Caracci or by Vandyck is generally more elegant and dignified than
tender. The Madonna, for instance, by Annibal, has something of the
majestic sentiment of an enthroned Madonna. Murillo excelled in this
subject; although most of his Virgins have a portrait air of common
life, they are redeemed by the expression. In one of these, the
Child, looking out of the picture with extended arms and eyes full
of divinity, seems about to spring forth to fulfil his mission. In
another he folds his little hands, and looks up to Heaven, as if
devoting himself to his appointed suffering, while the Mother looks
down upon him with a tender resignation. (Leuchtenberg Gal.) In a
noble Madonna by Vandyck (Bridgewater Gal.), it is she herself who
devotes him to do his Father's will; and I still remember a picture
of this class, by Carlo Cignani (Belvedere Gal., Vienna), which made
me start, with the intense expression: the Mother presses to her the
Child, who holds a cross in his baby hand; she looks up to heaven with
an appealing look of love and anguish,--almost of reproach. Guido
did not excel so much in children, as in the Virgin alone. Poussin,
Carlo Dolce, Sasso Ferrato, and, in general, all the painters of the
seventeenth century, give us pretty women and pretty children. We may
pass them over.

A second version of the Mater Amabilis, representing the Virgin
and Child full-length, but without accessories, has been also very
beautifully treated. She is usually seated in a landscape, and
frequently within the mystical enclosure (_Hortus clausus_), which is
sometimes in the German pictures a mere palisade of stakes or boughs.

Andrea Mantegna, though a fantastic painter, had generally some
meaning in his fancies. There is a fine picture of his in which the
Virgin and Child are seated in a landscape, and in the background is
a stone-quarry, where a number of figures are seen busily at work;
perhaps hewing the stone to build the new temple of which our Saviour
was the corner-stone. (Florence Gal.) In a group by Cristofan