levated her equally above the
weeping women and the timorous disciples. This is not, however, the
view which the modern painters have taken, and even the most ancient
examples exhibit the maternal grief for a while overcoming the
constancy. She is standing indeed, but in a fainting attitude, as if
about to sink to the earth, and is sustained in the arms of the two
Marys, assisted, sometimes, but not generally, by St. John; Mary
Magdalene is usually embracing the foot of the cross. With very little
variation this is the visual treatment down to the beginning of the
sixteenth century. I do not know who was the first artist who placed
the Mother prostrate on the ground; but it must be regarded as a
fault, and as detracting from the high religious dignity of the
scene. In all the greatest examples, from Cimabue, Giotto, and Pietro
Cavallini, down to Angelico, Masaccio, and Andrea Mantegna, and their
contemporaries, Mary is uniformly standing.

In a Crucifixion by Martin Schoen, the Virgin, partly held up in the
arms of St. John, embraces with fervour the foot of the cross: a very
rare and exceptional treatment, for this is the proper place of Mary
Magdalene. In Albert Durer's composition, she is just in the act of
sinking to the ground in a very natural attitude, as if her limbs had
given way under her. In Tintoretto's celebrated Crucifixion, we have
an example of the Virgin placed on the ground, which if not one of the
earliest, is one of the most striking of the more modern conceptions.
Here the group at the foot of the cross is wonderfully dramatic and
expressive, but certainly the reverse of dignified. Mary lies fainting
on the earth; one arm is sustained by St. John, the other is round the
neck of a woman who leans against the bosom of the Virgin, with eyes
closed, as if lost in grief. Mary Magdalene and another look up to the
crucified Saviour, and more in front a woman kneels wrapped up in a
cloak, and hides her face. (Venice, S. Rocco.)

Zani has noticed the impropriety here, and in other instances, of
exhibiting the "_Grandissima Donna_" as prostrate, and in a state
of insensibility; a style of treatment which, in more ancient times,
would have been inadmissible. The idea embodied by the artist should
be that which Bishop Taylor has _painted_ in words:--"By the cross
stood the holy Virgin Mother, upon whom old Simeon's prophecy was now
verified; for now she felt a sword passing through her very soul.
She stood wi