o the children, we find the same general
types repeated in the three pictures, but with some difference of
_motif_. The Christ-child of the Belle Jardiniere is looking up fondly
to his mother. In the Vienna picture he is eagerly interested in the
cross which the little St. John gives him. In the Uffizi picture he is
more serious, and strokes the goldfinch with an air of abstraction,
meditating on the holy things his mother has been reading to him.

The arrangement of the three figures is the same in all the pictures,
and is so entirely simple that we forget the greatness of the art. The
Virgin, dominating the composition, brings into unity the two smaller
figures. This unity is somewhat less perfect in the Belle Jardiniere,
because the little St. John is almost neglected in the intense
absorption of mother and child in each other.

Once again, in the later days at Rome, Raphael recurred to the
pastoral Madonna type of this Florentine period, and painted the
picture known as the Casa Alba Madonna. We have again the same smiling
landscape and the same charming children, but a Virgin of an
altogether new order. A turbaned Roman beauty of superb, Juno-like
physique, she does not belong to the idyllic character of her
surroundings. It is as if some brilliant exotic had been transplanted
from her native haunts to quiet fields, where hitherto the modest lily
had bloomed alone.

As Raphael's first inspiration for the pastoral Madonna came from the
influence of Leonardo da Vinci, it is of interest to compare his work
with that of the great Lombard himself. Critics tell us that the
Madonna pictures in which he came nearest to his model are the Madonna
in the Meadow and the Holy Family of the Lamb. (Madrid.) These we may
place beside the Madonna of the Rocks, which is the only entirely
authentic Da Vinci Madonna which we have.

It is only the skilled connoisseur who, in travelling from Paris to
Vienna, and from Vienna to Madrid, can hold in memory the qualities of
technique which link together the three pictures; but for general
characteristics of composition, the black and white reproductions may
suffice. Leonardo availed himself of his intimate knowledge of Nature
to choose from her storehouse something which is unique rather than
typical. The rock grotto doubtless has a real counterpart, but we must
go far to find it. In the river, gleaming beyond, we see the painter's
characteristic treatment of water, which Raphael was gl