gns, engraved by Marc Antonio, it is represented with
characteristic grace and delicacy.

Goethe describes with delight a picture by Correggio, in which the
attention of the Child seems divided between the bosom of his mother,
and some fruit offered by an angel. He calls this subject "The Weaning
of the Infant Christ." Correggio, if not the very first, is certainly
among the first of the Italians who treated this _motif_ in the simple
domestic style. Others of the Lombard school followed him; and I know
not a more exquisite example than the maternal group by Solario, now
in the Louvre, styled _La Vierge a l'Oreiller verd_, from the colour
of the pillow on which the Child is lying. The subject is frequent in
the contemporary German and Flemish schools of the sixteenth century.
In the next century, there are charming examples by the Bologna
painters and the _Naturalisti_, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish. I would
particularly point to one by Agostino Caracci (Parma), and to another
by Vandyck (that engraved by Bartolozzi), as examples of elegance;
while in the numerous specimens by Rubens we have merely his own
wife and son, painted with all that coarse vigorous life, and homely
affectionate expression, which his own strong domestic feelings could
lend them.

We have in other pictures the relation between the Mother and Child
expressed and varied in a thousand ways; as where she contemplates him
fondly--kisses him, pressing his cheeks to hers; or they sport with a
rose, or an apple, or a bird; or he presents it to his mother; these
originally mystical emblems being converted into playthings. In
another sketch she is amusing him by tinkling a bell:--the bell,
which has a religious significance, is here a plaything. One or more
attendant angels may vary the group, without taking it out of the
sphere of reality. In a quaint but charming picture in the Wallerstein
Collection, an angel is sporting with the Child at his mother's
feet--is literally his playfellow; and in a picture by Cambiaso, Mary,
assisted by an angel, is teaching her Child to walk.

* * * * *

To represent in the great enthroned Madonnas, the Infant Saviour of
the world asleep, has always appeared to me a solecism: whereas in
the domestic subject the Infant slumbering on his mother's knee, or
cradled in her arms, or on her bosom, or rocked by angels, is a most
charming subject. Sometimes angels are seen preparing his bed, or
l