.

The addition of Joseph as a fifth figure, completes the domestic
group. The introduction of the aged Zacharias renders, however, yet
more full and complete, the circle of human life and human affection.
We have then, infancy, youth, maturity, and age,--difference of sex
and various degrees of relationship, combined into one harmonious
whole; and in the midst, the divinity of innocence, the Child-God,
the brightness of a spiritual power, connecting our softest earthly
affections with our highest heavenward aspirations.[1]

[Footnote 1: The inscription under a Holy Family in which the children
are caressing each other is sometimes _Delicae meae esse cum filiis
hominum_ (Prov. viii. 31, "My delights were with the sons of men").]

* * * * *

A Holy Family of more than six figures (the angels not included) is
very unusual. But there are examples of groups combining all those
personages mentioned in the Gospels as being related to Christ,
though the nature and the degree of this supposed relationship has
embarrassed critics and commentators, and is not yet settled.

According to an ancient tradition, Anna, the mother of the Virgin
Mary, was three times married, Joachim being her third husband: the
two others were Cleophas and Salome. By Cleophas she had a daughter,
also called Mary, who was the wife of Alpheus, and the mother
of Thaddeus, James Minor, and Joseph Justus. By Salome she had a
daughter, also Mary, married to Zebedee, and the mother of James Major
and John the Evangelist. This idea that St. Anna was successively the
wife of three husbands, and the mother of three daughters, all of
the name of Mary, has been rejected by later authorities; but in the
beginning of the sixteenth century it was accepted, and to that period
may be referred the pictures, Italian and German, representing a
peculiar version of the Holy Family more properly styled "the Family
of the Virgin Mary."

A picture by Lorenzo di Pavia, painted about 1513, exhibits a very
complete example of this family group. Mary is seated in the centre,
holding in her lap the Infant Christ; near her is St. Joseph. Behind
the Virgin stand St. Anna, and three men, with their names inscribed,
Joachim, Cleophas, and Salome. On the right of the Virgin is Mary the
daughter of Cleophas, Alpheus her husband, and her children Thaddeus,
James Minor, and Joseph Justus. On the left of the Virgin is Mary the
daughter of Salome, her hus