Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/483

Rh as enthroned on that heart; yet already exalted through the homage of the redeemed generations who were to salute her as blessed. But it is refreshing to follow Mrs. Jameson in her genial criticism of other painters, at once enthusiastic and discriminating; and indeed she purposely sets aside, in a great measure, individual preferences, and all predilections for particular schools and particular periods of Art. A few pointed words serve to hint her estimate of the several examples under review—the dignified severity of the Virgins of Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi's chaste simplicity, and Fra Bartolomeo's noble tenderness—the imposing majesty of the true Caracci style—the Asiatic magnificence of Paul Veronese, Titian's truth to nature combined with Elysian grace, and the natural affectionate sentiments pervading the Venetian school—the soft, yet joyful maternal feeling portrayed so well by Correggio—Albert Durer's homely domesticity and fertile fancy—the sumptuous and picturesque treatment of "that rare and fascinating artist," Giorgione—Guido's grand but mannered style—the purity and simplicity of Bellini, whose every Madonna is "pensive, sedate, and sweet"—the homely, vigorous truth and consummate delicacy in detail of Holbein's happiest efforts—Murillo, par excellence the painter of the Conception, and embodying spotless grace, ethereal refinement, benignity, repose, "the very apotheosis of womanhood"—Michael Angelo, so good, so religious, yet deficient in humility and sympathy, semi-pagan in some of his imaginations, and sometimes most un-Christian in his conception of Christ—and Rubens, with his scenic effect and dramatic movement, his portraiture of coarse hearty life and domestic affectionate expression, and his occasionally daring bad taste. An edifying chapter might be devoted to an exposition of "bad taste" in the history of Madonna Art—a few illustrations of which Mrs. Jameson alludes to; Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin for instance, pronounced wonderful for its intense natural expression, and in the same degree grotesque from its impropriety —Andrea del Sarto's habit of depicting the features of his handsome, but vulgar and infamous wife (Lucrezia) in every Madonna he painted—and indeed the introduction at all of historical personages into devotional subjects, especially when the models were notoriously worthless. More amusing are such conceits as the introduction of the court-dwarf and the court-fool in the train of the adoring Magi, themselves booted and spurred—the swollen-cheeked bagpiper in Caracci's Nativity—St. John carrying two puppies in the lappets of his coat, and the dog leaping up to him (in Salimbeni's Holy Family)—the maliciously significant presence of a cat