s bear
scrolls, on one of which is inscribed the text from the Canticles,
"_Quae est ista quae progreditur quasi aurora consurgens, pulchra ut
luna, electa ut sol, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata?_" (Cant.
vi. 10;) on another, "_Quae est ista quae ascendit de deserto deliciis
affluens super dilectum suum?_" (Cant. viii. 5;) and on the third,
"_Quae est ista quae ascendit super dilectum suum ut virgula fumi?_"
(Cant. iii. 6.) This picture bears the date 1518. If it be true, as
is, indeed, most apparent, that it was painted by order of Maximilian
nearly forty years after the loss of the young wife he so tenderly
loved, and only one year before his own death, there is something
very touching in it as a memorial. The ingenious and tender compliment
implied by making Mary of Burgundy the real object of those mystic
texts consecrated to the glory of the MATER DEI, verges, perhaps,
on the profane; but it was not so intended; it was merely that
combination of the pious, and the poetical, and the sentimental, which
was one of the characteristics of the time, in literature, as well as
in art. (Heller's Albrecht Duerer p. 261.)

The picture by Jan Schoreel, one of the great ornaments of the
Boisseree Gallery,[1] is remarkable for its intense reality and
splendour of colour. The heads are full of character; that of the
Virgin in particular, who seems, with half-closed eyes, in act to
breathe away her soul in rapture. The altar near the bed, having on
it figures of Moses and Aaron, is, however, a serious fault and
incongruity in this fine painting.

[Footnote 1: Munich (70). The admirable lithograph by Strixner is well
known.]

I must observe that Mary is not always dead or dying: she is sometimes
preparing for death, in the act of prayer at the foot of her couch,
with the apostles standing round, as in a very fine picture by Martin
Schaffner, where she kneels with a lovely expression, sustained in the
arms of St. John, while St. Peter holds the gospel open before her.
(Munich Gal.) Sometimes she is sitting up in her bed, and reading from
the Book of the Scripture, which is always held by St. Peter.

In a picture by Cola della Matrice, the Death of the Virgin is treated
at once in a mystical and dramatic style. Enveloped in a dark blue
mantle spangled with golden stars, she lies extended on a couch;
St. Peter, in a splendid scarlet cope as bishop, reads the service;
St. John, holding the palm, weeps bitterly. In front, a