[Footnote 1:  There are also most charming examples in sculpture by Luca della Robbia, Donatello, and other masters of the Florentine school.]

There are instances in which attendant saints and votaries are introduced as beholding and adoring this great mystery. 1.  For instance, in a picture by Cima, Tobit and the angel are introduced on one side, and St. Helena and St. Catherine on the other. 2.  In a picture by Francia (Bologna Gal.), the Infant, reclining upon a white napkin, is adored by the kneeling Virgin, by St. Augustine, and by two angels also kneeling.  The votary, Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, for whom the picture was painted, kneels in the habit of a pilgrim.[1] He had lately returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, thus poetically expressed in the scene of the Nativity, and the picture was dedicated as an act of thanksgiving as well as of faith.  St. Joseph and St. Francis stand on one side; on the other is a shepherd crowned with laurel.  Francia, according to tradition, painted his own portrait as St. Francis; and his friend the poet, Girolamo Casio de’ Medici, as the shepherd. 3.  In a large and famous Nativity by Giulio Romano (Louvre, 293), which once belonged to our Charles I., St. John the Evangelist, and St. Longinus (who pierced our Saviour’s side with his lance), are standing on each side as two witnesses to the divinity of Christ;—­here strangely enough placed on a par:  but we are reminded that Longinus had lately been inaugurated as patron of Mantua, (v.  Sacred and Legendary Art.)

[Footnote 1:  “An excellent likeness,” says Vasari.  It is engraved as such in Litta’s Memorials of the Bentivogli.  Girolamo Casio received the laurel crown from the hand of Clement VII. in 1523.  A beautiful votive Madonna, dedicated by Girolamo Casio and his son Giacomo, and painted by Beltraffio, is in the Louvre.]

In a triptych by Hans Hemling (Berlin Gal.) we have in the centre the Child, adored, as usual, by the Virgin mother and attending angels, the votary also kneeling:  in the compartment on the right, we find the manifestation of the Redeemer to the west exhibited in the prophecy of the sibyl to Augustus; on the left, the manifestation of the Redeemer to the east is expressed by the journey of the Magi, and the miraculous star—­“we have seen his star in the east.”

But of all these ideal Nativities, the most striking is one by Sandro Botticelli, which is indeed a comprehensive poem, a kind of hymn on the Nativity, and might be set to music.  In the centre is a shed, beneath which the Virgin, kneeling, adores the Child, who has his finger on his lip.  Joseph is seen a little behind, as if in meditation.  On the right hand, the angel presents three figures (probably the shepherds) crowned with olive; on the left is a similar group.  On the roof of the shed, three angels, with olive-branches in their hands, sing the Gloria in excelsis.  Above these are twelve angels dancing or floating