hly associations, all
earthly communion.

The beautiful altar-piece by Perugino in our National Gallery is
properly a Madre Pia; the child seated on a cushion is sustained by an
angel, the mother kneels before him.

The famous Correggio in the Florentine Gallery is also a Madre Pia.
It is very tender, sweet, and maternal. The Child lying on part of
his mother's blue mantle, so arranged that while she kneels and bends
over him, she cannot change her attitude without disturbing him, is
a _concetto_ admired by critics in sentiment and Art; but it appears
to me very inferior and commonplace in comparison to the Francia at
Munich.

In a group by Botticelli, angels sustain the Infant, while the mother,
seated, with folded hands, adores him: and in a favourite composition
by Guido he sleeps.

And, lastly, we have the Mater Amabilis in a more complex, and
picturesque, though still devotional, form. The Virgin, seen at full
length, reclines on a verdant bank, or is seated under a tree. She
is not alone with her Child. Holy personages, admitted to a communion
with her, attend around her, rather sympathizing than adoring. The
love of varied nature, the love of life under all its aspects, became
mingled with the religious conception. Instead of carefully avoiding
whatever may remind us of her earthly relationship, the members of her
family always form a part of her _cortege_. This pastoral and dramatic
treatment began with the Venetian and Paduan schools, and extended to
the early German schools, which were allied to them in feeling, though
contrasted with them in form and execution.

The perpetual introduction of St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and other
relatives of the Virgin (always avoided in a Madonna dell Trono),
would compose what is called a Holy Family, but that the presence
of sainted personages whose existence and history belong to a
wholly different era--St. Catherine, St. George, St. Francis, or
St. Dominick--takes the composition out of the merely domestic and
historical, and lifts it at once into the ideal and devotional line
of art. Such a group cannot well be styled a _Sacra Famiglia_; it is a
_Sacra Conversazione_ treated in the pastoral and lyrical rather than
the lofty epic style.

In this subject the Venetians, who first introduced it, excel all
other painters. There is no example by Raphael. The German and Flemish
painters who adopted this treatment were often coarse and familiar;
the later Italians becam