[Footnote 1:  At Milan.  The fine engraving by Longhi is well known.]

[Footnote 2:  In the series by Giotto at Padua, we have the youth breaking his wand across his knee.]

In Ghirlandajo’s composition (Florence, S. Maria Novella), Joseph is an old man with a bald head; the architecture is splendid; the accessory figures, as is usual with Ghirlandajo, are numerous and full of grace.  In the background are musicians playing on the pipe and tabor, an incident which I do not recollect to have seen in other pictures.

The Sposalizio by Girolamo da Cotignola (Bologna Gal.), painted for the church of St. Joseph, is treated quite in a mystical style.  Mary and Joseph stand before an altar, on the steps of which are seated, on one side a prophet, on the other a sibyl.

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By the German painters the scene is represented with a characteristic homely neglect of all historic propriety.  The temple is a Gothic church; the altar has a Gothic altar-piece; Joseph looks like an old burgher arrayed in furs and an embroidered gown; and the Virgin is richly dressed in the costume of the fifteenth century.  The suitors are often knights and cavaliers with spurs and tight hose.

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It is not said anywhere that St. Anna and St. Joachim were present at the marriage of their daughter; hence they are supposed to have been dead before it took place.  This has not prevented some of the old German artists from introducing them, because, according to their ideas of domestic propriety, they ought to have been present.

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I observe that the later painters who treated the subject, Rubens and Poussin for instance, omit the disappointed suitors.

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After the marriage, or betrothal, Joseph conducts his wife to his house.  The group of the returning procession has been beautifully treated in Giotto’s series at Padua;[1] still more beautifully by Luigi in the fragment of fresco now in the Brera at Milan.  Here Joseph and Mary walk together hand in hand.  He looks at her, just touching her fingers with an air of tender veneration; she looks down, serenely modest.  Thus they return together to their humble home; and with this scene closes the first part of the life of the Virgin Mary.

[Footnote 1:  Cappella dell’ Arena, engraved for the Arundel Society.]

HISTORICAL SUBJECTS

PART II

THE LIFE OF THE VIRGIN MARY FROM THE ANNUNCIATION TO THE RETURN FROM EGYPT.

1.  THE ANNUNCIATION. 2.  THE SALUTATION OF ELIZABETH. 3.  THE JOUBNEY TO BETHLEHEM. 4.  THE NATIVITY. 6.  THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 6.  THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. 7.  THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 8.  THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 9.  THE RIPOSO. 10.  THE RETURN FROM EGYPT.