Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/138

 112 hangs in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna. It is another presentation of that ever familiar theme, the birth of the Blessed Virgin. Saint Ann sits upright on her bed. Saint Joachim enters the door. The spacious room is full of attendants, engaged in waiting on their mistress, in airing the baby linen, in washing and admiring the infant. Everybody is busy and excited. Everybody, save Saint Ann, is standing, or kneeling on the floor. There is, in fact, but one chair in the room. On that chair is a cushion, and on that cushion sleeps, serene and undisturbed, a cat.

It is to be regretted that Titian and Velasquez and Murillo gave their manifest preference to dogs. Titian's lap-dogs are the most engaging in art; and the little white woolly creatures—like toy lambs—that Murillo painted, beguile our souls with their air of wistful and sympathetic intelligence. Who does not remember—and remembering, love—the poor little beast in the Louvre, who holds up one paw beseechingly, and begs for a peep at the newborn Virgin? A small, fat, azure-winged angel, carrying a basket of baby linen, and bursting with pride over the importance of his task, decides upon his own authority that no dogs shall be permitted to enter, and huffs the petitioner away. Velasquez, though he painted a fine puss in "Las Hilanderas," ignored the race as a rule. His partiality was for