r of her home, was
hesitatingly adopted, and has been so rarely treated, even down to our
own times, as to form but a small group of pictures in the great body
of art.

[Illustration: SCHONGAUER.--HOLY FAMILY.]

The Northern painters naturally led the way. Peculiarly home-loving
in their tastes, their ideal woman is the _hausfrau_, and it was with
them no lowering of the Madonna's dignity to represent her in this
capacity. A picture in the style of Quentin Massys hangs in the Munich
Gallery, and shows a Flemish bedroom of the fifteenth century. At the
left stands the bed, and on the right burns the fire, with a kettle
hanging over it. The Virgin sits alone with her babe at her breast.

More frequently a domestic scene of this sort includes other figures
belonging to the Holy Family. A typical German example is the picture
by Schongauer in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna. The Virgin is seated
in homely surroundings, intent upon a bunch of grapes which she holds
in her hands, and which she has taken from a basket standing on the
floor beside her. Long, waving hair falls over her shoulders; a snowy
kerchief is folded primly in the neck of her dress; she is the
impersonation of virgin modesty. Her baby boy stands on her lap,
nestling against his mother; his eyes fixed on the fruit, his eager
little face glowing with pleasure. Beyond are seen the cattle, which
Joseph is feeding. He pauses at the door, a bundle of hay in his arms,
to look in with fond pride at his young wife and her child.

Schongauer's work belongs to the latter part of the fifteenth century,
and there was nothing similar to it in Italy at the same period. It is
true that Madonnas in domestic settings have been attributed to
contemporaneous Italians, but they were probably by some Flemish hand.

[Illustration: RAPHAEL.--MADONNA DELL' IMPANNATA.]

Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, was perhaps the first of the
Italians to give any domestic touch to the subject of the Madonna and
child. His Madonna della Catina of the Dresden Gallery is well known.
It is so called from the basin in which the Christ-child stands while
the little St. John pours in water from a pitcher for the bath.
Another picture by the same artist shows the Madonna seated with her
child in the interior of a bedchamber. This was one of the
"discoveries" of the late Senator Giovanni Morelli, the critic, and is
in a private collection in Dresden.

To Giulio Romano also, according to recen