4.  The composition by Albert Durer[1] gives us an exact transcript of antique German life, quite wonderful for the homely truth of the delineation, but equally without the simplicity of a scriptural or the dignity of an historical scene.  In an old-fashioned German chamber lies St. Anna in an old-fashioned canopied bedstead.  Two women bring her a soup and something to drink, while the midwife, tired with her exertions, leans her head on the bedside and has sank to sleep.  A crowd of women fill up the foreground, one of whom attends to the new-born child:  others, who appear to have watched through the night, as we may suppose from the nearly extinguished candles, are intent on good cheer; they congratulate each other; they eat, drink, and repose themselves.  It would be merely a scene of German commerage, full of nature and reality, if an angel hovering above, and swinging a censer, did not remind us of the sacred importance of the incident represented.

[Footnote 1:  In the set of wood-cuts of the “Life of the Virgin Mary.”]

5.  In the strongest possible contrast to the homely but animated conception of Albert Durer, is the grand fresco by Andrea del Sarto, in the church of the Nunziata at Florence.  The incidents are nearly the same:  we have St. Anna reclining in her bed and attended by her women; the nurses waiting on the lovely new-born child; the visitors who enter to congratulate; but all, down to the handmaidens who bring refreshments, are noble and dignified, and draped in that magnificent taste which distinguished Andrea, Angels scatter flowers from above and, which is very uncommon, Joachim is seen, after the anxious night reposing on a couch.  Nothing in fresco can exceed the harmony and brilliancy of the colouring, and the softness of the execution.  It appeared to me a masterpiece as a picture.  Like Ghirlandajo, Andrea has introduced portraits; and in the Florentine lady who stands in the foreground we recognize the features of his worthless wife Lucrezia, the original model of so many of his female figures that the ignoble beauty of her face has become quite familiar.

THE PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN.

Ital. La Presentazione, ove nostra Signora piccioletta sale i gradi del Tempio. Ger. Joachim und Anna weihen ihre Tochter Maria im Tempel.  Die Vorstellung der Jungfrau im Tempel.  Nov. 21.

In the interval between the birth of Mary and her consecration in the temple, there is no incident which I can remember as being important or popular as a subject of art.

It is recorded with what tenderness her mother Anna watched over her, “how she made of her bedchamber a holy place, allowing nothing that was common or unclean to enter in;” and called to her “certain daughters of Israel, pure and gentle,” whom she appointed to attend on her.  In some of the early miniature illustrations of the Offices of the Virgin, St. Anna thus ministers to her child; for instance, in a beautiful Greek MS. in the Vatican, she is tenderly putting her into a little bed or cradle and covering her up. (It is engraved in d’Agincourt.)