Here are some examples by Domenico Puligo.  The Virgin not seated, but standing on a lofty pedestal, looks down on her worshippers; the Child in her arms extends the right hand in benediction; with his left he points to himself, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  Around are six saints, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John the Baptist as protector of Florence, St. Matthew, St. Catherine; and St. Bernard, in his ample white habit, with his keen intellectual face, is about to write in a great book, and looking up to the Virgin for inspiration.  The picture was originally painted for the Cistercians.[1]

[Footnote 1:  It is now in the S. Maria-Maddalena de’ Pazzi at Florence.  Engraved in the “Etruria Pittrice,” xxxv.]

The Virgin and Child enthroned between St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica, as in a fine picture by Florigerio (Venice Acad.), would show the picture to be painted for one of the numerous branches of the Augustine Order.  St. Antony the abbot is a favourite saint in pictures painted for the Augustine hermits.

In the “Madonna del Baldachino” of Raphael, the beardless saint who stands in a white habit on one side of the throne is usually styled St. Bruno; an evident mistake.  It is not a Carthusian, but a Cistercian monk, and I think St. Bernard, the general patron of monastic learning.  The other attendant saints are St. Peter, St. James, and St. Augustine.  The picture was originally painted for the church of San Spirito at Florence, belonging to the Augustines.

But St. Augustine is also the patriarch of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and frequently takes an influential place in their pictures, as the companion either of St. Francis or of St. Dominick, as in a picture by Fra Angelico. (Florence Gal.)

Among the votive Madonnas of the mendicant orders, I will mention a few conspicuous for beauty and interest, which will serve as a key to others.

1.  The Virgin and Child enthroned between Antony of Padua and St. Clara of Assisi, as in a small elegant picture by Pellegrino, must have been dedicated in a church of the Franciscans. (Sutherland Gal.)

2.  The Virgin blesses St. Francis, who looks up adoring:  behind him St. Antony of Padua; on the other side, John the Baptist as a man, and St. Catherine.  A celebrated but not an agreeable picture, painted by Correggio for the Franciscan church at Parma. (Dresden Gal.)

3.  The Virgin is seated in glory; on one side St. Francis, on the other St. Antony of Padua, both placed in heaven, and almost on an equality with the celestial personages.  Around are seven female figures, representing the seven cardinal virtues, bearing their respective attributes.  Below are seen the worthies of the Franciscan Order; to the right of the Virgin, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Louis of France, St. Bonaventura; to the left, St. Ives of Bretagne, St. Eleazar, and St. Louis of Toulouse.[1] Painted for the Franciscans by Morone and Paolo Cavazzolo of Verona.  This is a picture of wonderful beauty, and quite poetical in the sentiment and arrangement, and the mingling of the celestial, the allegorical, and the real personages, with a certain solemnity and gracefulness quite indescribable.  The virtues, for instance, are not so much allegorical persons as spiritual appearances, and the whole of the ripper part of the picture is like a vision.