Once introduced, these half-length enthroned Madonnas became very common, spreading from the Venetian states through the north of Italy; and we find innumerable examples from the best schools of art in Italy and Germany, from the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century.  I shall particularize a few of these, which will be sufficient to guide the attention of the observer; and we must carefully discriminate between the sentiment proper to these half-length enthroned Madonnas, and the pastoral or domestic sacred groups and Holy Families, of which I shall have to treat hereafter.

Raphael’s well-known Madonna della Seggiola and Madonna della Candelabra, are both enthroned Virgins in the grand style, though seen half-length.  In fact, the air of the head ought, in the higher schools of art, at once to distinguish a Madonna, in trono, even where only the head is visible.

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In a Milanese picture, the Virgin and Child appear between St. Laurence and St. John.  The mannered and somewhat affected treatment is contrasted with the quiet, solemn simplicity of a group by Francia, where the Virgin and Child appear as objects of worship between St. Dominick and St. Barbara.

The Child, standing or seated on a table or balustrade in front, enabled the painter to vary the attitude, to take the infant Christ out of the arms of the Mother, and to render his figure more prominent.  It was a favourite arrangement with the Venetians; and there is an instance in a pretty picture in our National Gallery, attributed to Perugino.

Sometimes, even where the throne and the attendant saints and angels show the group to be wholly devotional and exalted, we find the sentiment varied by a touch of the dramatic,—­by the introduction of an action; but it must be one of a wholly religious significance, suggestive of a religious feeling, or the subject ceases to be properly devotional in character.

There is a picture by Botticelli, before which, in walking up the corridor of the Florence Gallery, I used, day after day, to make an involuntary pause of admiration.  The Virgin, seated in a chair of state, but seen only to the knees, sustains her divine Son with one arm; four angels are in attendance, one of whom presents an inkhorn, another holds before her an open book, and she is in the act of writing the Magnificat, “My soul doth magnify the Lord!” The head of the figure behind the Virgin is the portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici when a boy.  There is absolutely no beauty of feature, either in the Madonna, or the Child, or the angels, yet every face is full of dignity and character.

In a beautiful picture by Titian (Bel.  Gal., Vienna.  Louvre, No. 458), the Virgin is enthroned on the left, and on the right appear St. George and St. Laurence as listening, while St. Jerome reads from his great book.  A small copy of this picture is at Windsor.