With regard, to other painters before or since his time, the examples of the Mater Amabilis so abound la public and private galleries, and have been so multiplied in prints, that comparison is within the reach of every observer.  I will content myself with noticing a few of the most remarkable for beauty or characteristic treatment.  Two painters, who eminently excelled in simplicity and purity of sentiment, are Gian Bellini of Venice, and Bernardino Luini of Milan.  Squarcione, though often fantastic, has painted one or two of these Madonnas, remarkable for simplicity and dignity, as also his pupil Mantegna; though in both the style of execution is somewhat hard and cold.  In the one by Fra Bartolomeo, there is such a depth of maternal tenderness in the expression and attitude, we wonder where the good monk found his model.  In his own heart? in his dreams?  A Mater Amabilis by one of the Caracci or by Vandyck is generally more elegant and dignified than tender.  The Madonna, for instance, by Annibal, has something of the majestic sentiment of an enthroned Madonna.  Murillo excelled in this subject; although most of his Virgins have a portrait air of common life, they are redeemed by the expression.  In one of these, the Child, looking out of the picture with extended arms and eyes full of divinity, seems about to spring forth to fulfil his mission.  In another he folds his little hands, and looks up to Heaven, as if devoting himself to his appointed suffering, while the Mother looks down upon him with a tender resignation. (Leuchtenberg Gal.) In a noble Madonna by Vandyck (Bridgewater Gal.), it is she herself who devotes him to do his Father’s will; and I still remember a picture of this class, by Carlo Cignani (Belvedere Gal., Vienna), which made me start, with the intense expression:  the Mother presses to her the Child, who holds a cross in his baby hand; she looks up to heaven with an appealing look of love and anguish,—­almost of reproach.  Guido did not excel so much in children, as in the Virgin alone.  Poussin, Carlo Dolce, Sasso Ferrato, and, in general, all the painters of the seventeenth century, give us pretty women and pretty children.  We may pass them over.

A second version of the Mater Amabilis, representing the Virgin and Child full-length, but without accessories, has been also very beautifully treated.  She is usually seated in a landscape, and frequently within the mystical enclosure (Hortus clausus), which is sometimes in the German pictures a mere palisade of stakes or boughs.

Andrea Mantegna, though a fantastic painter, had generally some meaning in his fancies.  There is a fine picture of his in which the Virgin and Child are seated in a landscape, and in the background is a stone-quarry, where a number of figures are seen busily at work; perhaps hewing the stone to build the new temple of which our Saviour was the corner-stone. (Florence Gal.) In a group by Cristofano Allori, the Child places a wreath of flowers on the brow of his Mother, holding in his other hand his own crown of thorns:  one of the fancies of the later schools of art.