e flippant and fantastic. The Venetians alone
knew how to combine the truest feeling for nature with a sort of
Elysian grace.

I shall give a few examples.

1. In a picture by Titian (Dresden Gal.), the Virgin is seated on
a green bank enamelled with flowers. She is simply dressed like a
_contadina_, in a crimson tunic, and a white veil half shading her
fair hair. She holds in her arms her lovely Infant, who raises his
little hand in benediction. St. Catherine kneels before him on one
side; on the other, St. Barbara. St. John the Baptist, not as a child,
and the contemporary of our Saviour, but in likeness of an Arcadian
shepherd, kneels with his cross and his lamb--the _Ecce Agnus Dei_,
expressed, not in words, but in form. St. George stands by as a
guardian warrior. And St. Joseph, leaning on his stick behind,
contemplates the group with an air of dignified complacency.

2. There is another instance also from Titian. In a most luxuriant
landscape thick with embowering trees, and the mountains of Cadore in
the background, the Virgin is seated on a verdant bank; St. Catherine
has thrown herself on her knees, and stretches out her arms to the
divine Child in an ecstasy of adoration, in which there is nothing
unseemly or familiar. At a distance St. John the Baptist approaches
with his Lamb.

3. In another very similar group, the action of St. Catherine is
rather too familiar,--it is that of an eider sister or a nurse: the
young St. John kneels in worship.

4. Wonderfully fine is a picture of this class by Palma, now in the
Dresden Gallery. The noble, serious, sumptuous loveliness of the
Virgin; the exquisite Child, so thoughtful, yet so infantine; the
manly beauty of the St. John; the charming humility of the St.
Catherine as she presents her palm, form one of the most perfect
groups in the world. Childhood, motherhood, maidenhood, manhood,
were never, I think, combined in so sweet a spirit of humanity.[1]

[Footnote 1: When I was at Dresden, in 1860, I found Steinle, so
celebrated for his engravings of the Madonna di San Sisto and the
Holbein Madonna, employed on this picture; and, as far as his
art could go, transferring to his copper all the fervour and the
_morbidezza_ of the original.]

5. In another picture by Palma, in the same gallery, we have the same
picturesque arrangement of the Virgin and Child, while the _little_
St. John adores with folded hands, and St. Catherine sits by in tender
contemplation.