[Footnote 1:  In the famous set of wood cuts of the Life of the Virgin Mary.]

In a Riposo by Titian, the Infant lies on a pillow on the ground, and the Virgin is kneeling before him, while Joseph leans on his pilgrim’s staff, to which is suspended a wallet.  In another, two angels, kneeling, offer fruits in a basket; in the distance, a little angel waters the ass at a stream. (All these are engraved.)

The angels, according to the legend, not only ministered to the Holy Family, but pitched a tent nightly, in which they were sheltered.  Poussin, in an exquisite picture, has represented the Virgin and Child reposing under a curtain suspended from the branches of a tree and partly sustained by angels, while others, kneeling, offer fruit.  (Grosvenor Gal.)

Poussin is the only painter who has attempted to express the locality.  In one of his pictures the Holy Family reposes on the steps of an Egyptian temple; a sphinx and a pyramid are visible in the background.  In another Riposo by the same master, an Ethiopian boy presents fruits to the Infant Christ.  Joseph is frequently asleep, which is hardly consonant with the spirit of the older legends.  It is, however, a beautiful idea to make the Child and Joseph both reposing, while the Virgin Mother, with eyes upraised to heaven, wakes and watches, as in a picture by Mola (Louvre, 269); but a yet more beautiful idea to represent the Virgin and Joseph sunk in sleep, while the divine Infant lying in his mother’s arms wakes and watches for both, with his little hands joined in prayer, and his eyes fixed on the hovering angels or the opening skies above.

In a Riposo by Rembrandt, the Holy Family rest by night, and are illuminated only by a lantern suspended on the bough of a tree, the whole group having much the air of a gypsy encampment.  But one of Rembrandt’s imitators has in his own way improved on this fancy; the Virgin sleeps on a bank with the Child on her bosom; Joseph, who looks extremely like an old tinker, is doubling his fist at the ass, which has opened its mouth to bray.

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Before quitting the subject of the Riposo, I must mention a very pretty and poetical legend, which I have met with in one picture only; a description of it may, however, lead to the recognition of others.

There is, in the collection of Lord Shrewsbury, at Alton Towers, a Riposo attributed to Giorgione, remarkable equally for the beauty and the singularity of the treatment.  The Holy Family are seated in the midst of a wild but rich landscape, quite in the Venetian style; Joseph is asleep; the two children are playing with a lamb.  The Virgin, seated holds a book, and turns round, with an expression of surprise and alarm, to a female figure who stands on the right.  This woman has a dark physiognomy, ample flowing drapery of red and white, a white turban twisted round her head, and stretches out her hand with the air of a