In a Crucifixion by Martin Schoen, the Virgin, partly held up in the arms of St. John, embraces with fervour the foot of the cross:  a very rare and exceptional treatment, for this is the proper place of Mary Magdalene.  In Albert Durer’s composition, she is just in the act of sinking to the ground in a very natural attitude, as if her limbs had given way under her.  In Tintoretto’s celebrated Crucifixion, we have an example of the Virgin placed on the ground, which if not one of the earliest, is one of the most striking of the more modern conceptions.  Here the group at the foot of the cross is wonderfully dramatic and expressive, but certainly the reverse of dignified.  Mary lies fainting on the earth; one arm is sustained by St. John, the other is round the neck of a woman who leans against the bosom of the Virgin, with eyes closed, as if lost in grief.  Mary Magdalene and another look up to the crucified Saviour, and more in front a woman kneels wrapped up in a cloak, and hides her face. (Venice, S. Rocco.)

Zani has noticed the impropriety here, and in other instances, of exhibiting the “Grandissima Donna” as prostrate, and in a state of insensibility; a style of treatment which, in more ancient times, would have been inadmissible.  The idea embodied by the artist should be that which Bishop Taylor has painted in words:—­“By the cross stood the holy Virgin Mother, upon whom old Simeon’s prophecy was now verified; for now she felt a sword passing through her very soul.  She stood without clamour and womanish noises sad, silent, and with a modest grief, deep as the waters of the abyss, but smooth as the face of a pool; full of love, and patience, and sorrow, and hope!” To suppose that this noble creature lost all power over her emotions, lost her consciousness of the “high affliction” she was called to suffer, is quite unworthy of the grand ideal of womanly perfection here placed before us.  It is clear, however, that in the later representations, the intense expression of maternal anguish in the hymn of the Stabat Mater gave the key to the prevailing sentiment.  And as it is sometimes easier to faint than to endure; so it was easier for certain artists to express the pallor and prostration of insensibility, than the sublime faith and fortitude which in that extremest hour of trial conquered even a mother’s unutterable woe.

That most affecting moment, in which the dying Saviour recommends his Mother to the care of the best beloved of his disciples, I have never seen worthily treated.  There are, however, some few Crucifixions in which I presume the idea to have been indicated; as where the Virgin stands leaning on St. John, with his sustaining arm reverently round her, and both looking up to the Saviour, whose dying face is turned towards them.  There is an instance by Albert Durer (the wood-cut in the “Large Passion"); but the examples are so few as to be exceptional.

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