Sometimes not four, but two only of these Fathers, appear in combination with other figures, and the choice would depend on the locality and other circumstances.  But, on the whole, we rarely find a group of personages assembled round the throne of the Virgin which does not include one or more of these venerable pillars of the Church.  St. Ambrose appears most frequently in the Milanese pictures:  St. Augustine and St. Jerome, as patriarchs of monastic orders, are very popular:  St. Gregory, I think, is more seldom met with than the others.

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The Virgin, with St. Jerome and St. Catherine, the patron saints of theological learning, is a frequent group in all monasteries, but particularly in the churches and houses of the Jeronimites.  A beautiful example is the Madonna, by Francia. (Borghese Palace.  Rome.) St. Jerome, with Mary Magdalene, also a frequent combination, expresses theological learning in union with religious penitence and humility.  Correggio’s famous picture is an example, where St. Jerome on one side presents his works in defence of the Church, and his translation of the Scriptures; while, on the other, Mary Magdalene, bending down devoutly, kisses the feet of the infant Christ. (Parma.)

Of all the attendants on the Virgin and Child, the most popular is, perhaps, St. Catherine; and the “Marriage of St. Catherine,” as a religious mystery, is made to combine with the most solemn and formal arrangement of the other attendant figures.  The enthroned Virgin presides over the mystical rite.  This was, for intelligible reasons, a favourite subject in nunneries.[1]

[Footnote 1:  For a detailed account of the legendary marriage of St. Catherine and examples of treatment, see Sacred and Legendary Art.]

In a picture by Garofalo, the Child, bending from his mother’s knee, places a golden crown on the head of St. Catherine as Sposa; on each side stand St. Agnes and St. Jerome.

In a picture by Carlo Maratti, the nuptials take place in heaven, the Virgin and Child being throned in clouds.

If the kneeling Sposa be St. Catherine of Siena, the nun, and not St. Catherine of Alexandria, or if the two are introduced, then we may be sure that the picture was painted for a nunnery of the Dominican order.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Legends of the Monastic Orders.  A fine example of this group “the Spozulizio of St. Catherine of Siena,” has lately been added to our National Gallery; (Lorenzo di San Severino, No. 249.)]

The great Madonna in Trono by the Dominican Fra Bartolomeo, wherein the queenly St. Catherine of Alexandria witnesses the mystical marriage of her sister saint, the nun of Siena, will occur to every one who has been at Florence; and there is a smaller picture by the same painter in the Louvre;—­a different version of the same subject.  I must content myself with merely referring to these well-known pictures which have been often engraved, and dwell more in detail on another, not so well known, and, to my feeling, as preeminently beautiful and poetical, but in the early Flemish, not the Italian style—­a poem in a language less smooth and sonorous, but still a poem.