Page:How to show pictures to children (IA howtoshowpictur00hurl).pdf/149

 are these artless little creatures, bending over lute or violin with complete absorption. Bellini, Palma, and Carpaccio contributed some winsome examples. A few of the Florentines—notably Raphael and Bartolommeo—and the Bolognese Francia adopted the Venetian idea with characteristic variations. Other baby figures, or “putti,” for all sorts of decorative purposes, are scattered freely through Italian Renaissance painting, carrying banderoles or cartouches, supporting pedestals or medallions. In the limited repertory of subjects in this period. these child ideals formed a sort of outlet for the artist’s playful fancy.

Turning from these ideal child subjects of past centuries to the field of portrait painting, we find that real portraits of real children constitute a very interesting and attractive class of pictures for the little ones in our schools and homes. They make the home life of historic periods more vivid to us, they teach us how the boys and girls of olden times dressed, and, most of all, they show us that child nature is the same in all ages. With what wonder and curiosity do we gaze upon the monstrous skirts, the long, stiff corsets, and the elaborate finery which burdened little royalty of long ago. But that babies of four hundred years back played with rattles as they do now, and that children frolicked with pet dogs and clung to their mothers’ knees, unites the past and the present very closely. Sometimes we come unexpectedly upon a style of dress which seems quite familiar—a plumed hat, a jaunty cap, a broad lace collar, a “Dutch cut” of hair, a “Russian blouse.” The picture of a child