6.  I will give one more instance.  There is in our National Gallery a Venetian picture which is striking from its peculiar and characteristic treatment.  On one side, the Virgin with her Infant is seated on a throne; a cavalier, wearing armour and a turban, who looks as if he had just returned from the eastern wars, prostrates himself before her:  in the background, a page (said to be the portrait of the painter) holds the horse of the votary.  The figures are life-size, or nearly so, as well as I can remember, and the sentimental dramatic treatment is quite Venetian.  It is supposed to represent a certain Duccio Constanzo of Treviso, and was once attributed to Giorgione:  it is certainly of the school of Bellini. (Nat.  Gal.  Catalogue, 234.)

* * * * *

As these enthroned and votive Virgins multiplied, as it became more and more a fashion to dedicate them as offerings in churches, want of space, and perhaps, also, regard to expense, suggested the idea of representing the figures half-length.  The Venetians, from early time the best face painters in the world, appear to have been the first to cut off the lower part of the figure, leaving the arrangement otherwise much the same.  The Virgin is still a queenly and majestic creature, sitting there to be adored.  A curtain or part of a carved chair represents her throne.  The attendant saints are placed to the right and to the left; or sometimes the throne occupies one side of the picture, and the saints are ranged on the other.  From the shape and diminished size of these votive pictures the personages, seen half-length, are necessarily placed very near to each other, and the heads nearly on a level with that of the Virgin, who is generally seen to the knees, while the Child is always full-length.  In such compositions we miss the grandeur of the entire forms, and the consequent diversity of character and attitude; but sometimes the beauty and individuality of the heads atone for all other deficiencies.

* * * * *

In the earlier Venetian examples, those of Gian Bellini particularly, there is a solemn quiet elevation which renders them little inferior, in religious sentiment, to the most majestic of the enthroned and enskied Madonnas.

* * * * *

There is a sacred group by Bellini, in the possession of Sir Charles Eastlake, which has always appeared to me a very perfect specimen of this class of pictures.  It is also the earliest I know of.  The Virgin, pensive, sedate, and sweet, like all Bellini’s Virgins, is seated in the centre, and seen in front.  The Child, on her knee, blesses with his right hand, and the Virgin places hers on the head of a votary, who just appears above the edge of the picture, with hands joined in prayer; he is a fine young man with an elevated and elegant profile.  On the right are St. John the Baptist pointing to the Saviour, and St. Catherine; on the left, St. George with his banner, and St. Peter holding his book.  A similar picture, with Mary Magdalene and St. Jerome on the right, St. Peter and St. Martha on the left, is in the Leuchtenberg Gallery at Munich.  Another of exquisite beauty is in the Venice Academy, in which the lovely St. Catherine wears a crown of myrtle.