Shall I attempt a rapid classification and interpretation of these infinitely varied groups?  It is a theme which might well occupy volumes rather than pages, and which requires far more antiquarian learning and historical research than I can pretend to; still by giving the result of my own observations in some few instances, it may be possible so to excite the attention and fancy of the reader, as to lead him further on the same path than I have myself been able to venture.

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We can trace, in a large class of these pictures, a general religious significance, common to all periods, all localities, all circumstances; while in another class, the interest is not only particular and local, but sometimes even personal.

To the first class belongs the antique and beautiful group of the Virgin and Child, enthroned between the two great archangels, St. Michael and St. Gabriel.  It is probably the most ancient of these combinations:  we find it in the earliest Greek art, in the carved ivory diptychs of the eighth and ninth centuries, in the old Greco-Italian pictures, in the ecclesiastical sculpture and stained glass of from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.  In the most ancient examples, the two angels are seen standing on each side of the Madonna, not worshipping, but with their sceptres and attributes, as princes of the heavenly host, attending on her who is queen of angels; St. Gabriel as the angel of birth and life, St. Michael as the angel of Death, that is, in the Christian sense, of deliverance and immortality.  There is an instance of this antique treatment in a small Greek picture in the Wallerstein collection. (Now at Kensington Palace.)

In later pictures, St. Gabriel seldom appears except as the Angela Annunziatore; but St. Michael very frequently.  Sometimes, as conqueror over sin and representative of the Church militant, he stands with his foot on the dragon with a triumphant air; or, kneeling, he presents to the infant Christ the scales of eternal justice, as in a famous picture by Leonardo da Vinci.  It is not only because of his popularity as a patron saint, and of the number of churches dedicated to him, that he is so frequently introduced into the Madonna pictures; according to the legend, he was by Divine appointment the guardian of the Virgin and her Son while they sojourned on earth.  The angel Raphael leading Tobias always expresses protection, and especially protection to the young.  Tobias with his fish was an early type of baptism.  There are many beautiful examples.  In Raphael’s “Madonna dell’ Pesce” (Madrid Gal.) he is introduced as the patron saint of the painter, but not without a reference to more sacred meaning, that of the guardian spirit of all humanity.  The warlike figure of St. Michael, and the benign St. Raphael, are thus represented as celestial guardians in the beautiful picture by Perugino now in our National Gallery. (No. 288.)