* * * *

I observe that the later painters who treated the subject, Rubens and
Poussin for instance, omit the disappointed suitors.

* * * * *

After the marriage, or betrothal, Joseph conducts his wife to his
house. The group of the returning procession has been beautifully
treated in Giotto's series at Padua;[1] still more beautifully by
Luigi in the fragment of fresco now in the Brera at Milan. Here Joseph
and Mary walk together hand in hand. He looks at her, just touching
her fingers with an air of tender veneration; she looks down, serenely
modest. Thus they return together to their humble home; and with this
scene closes the first part of the life of the Virgin Mary.

[Footnote 1: Cappella dell' Arena, engraved for the Arundel Society.]

HISTORICAL SUBJECTS

PART II

THE LIFE OF THE VIRGIN MARY FROM THE ANNUNCIATION TO THE RETURN FROM
EGYPT.

1. THE ANNUNCIATION. 2. THE SALUTATION OF ELIZABETH. 3. THE JOUBNEY TO
BETHLEHEM. 4. THE NATIVITY. 6. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 6.
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. 7. THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 8. THE
FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 9. THE RIPOSO. 10. THE RETURN FROM EGYPT.

THE ANNUNCIATION.

_Ital._ L' Annunciazione. La B. Vergine Annunziata. _Fr._
L'Annonciation. La Salutation Angelique. _Ger._ Die Verkuendi gung. Der
Englische Gruss. March 25.

The second part of the life of the Virgin Mary begins with the
Annunciation and ends with the Crucifixion, comprising all those
scriptural incidents which connect her history with that of her divine
Son.

But to the scenes narrated in the Gospels the painters did not confine
themselves. Not only were the simple scripture histories coloured
throughout by the predominant and enthusiastic veneration paid to the
Virgin--till the life of Christ was absolutely merged in that of His
mother, and its various incidents became "the seven joys and the seven
sorrows of Mary,"--but we find the artistic representations of her
life curiously embroidered and variegated by the introduction of
traditional and apocryphal circumstances, in most cases sanctioned
by the Church authorities of the time. However doubtful or repulsive
some of these scenes and incidents, we cannot call them absolutely
unmeaning or absurd; on the contrary, what was _supposed_ grew up very
naturally, in the vivid and excited imaginations of the people, out of
what was _recorded_; nor did they disting