most apparent, that it was painted by order of Maximilian nearly forty years after the loss of the young wife he so tenderly loved, and only one year before his own death, there is something very touching in it as a memorial.  The ingenious and tender compliment implied by making Mary of Burgundy the real object of those mystic texts consecrated to the glory of the MATER DEI, verges, perhaps, on the profane; but it was not so intended; it was merely that combination of the pious, and the poetical, and the sentimental, which was one of the characteristics of the time, in literature, as well as in art. (Heller’s Albrecht Duerer p. 261.)

The picture by Jan Schoreel, one of the great ornaments of the Boisseree Gallery,[1] is remarkable for its intense reality and splendour of colour.  The heads are full of character; that of the Virgin in particular, who seems, with half-closed eyes, in act to breathe away her soul in rapture.  The altar near the bed, having on it figures of Moses and Aaron, is, however, a serious fault and incongruity in this fine painting.

[Footnote 1:  Munich (70).  The admirable lithograph by Strixner is well known.]

I must observe that Mary is not always dead or dying:  she is sometimes preparing for death, in the act of prayer at the foot of her couch, with the apostles standing round, as in a very fine picture by Martin Schaffner, where she kneels with a lovely expression, sustained in the arms of St. John, while St. Peter holds the gospel open before her.  (Munich Gal.) Sometimes she is sitting up in her bed, and reading from the Book of the Scripture, which is always held by St. Peter.

In a picture by Cola della Matrice, the Death of the Virgin is treated at once in a mystical and dramatic style.  Enveloped in a dark blue mantle spangled with golden stars, she lies extended on a couch; St. Peter, in a splendid scarlet cope as bishop, reads the service; St. John, holding the palm, weeps bitterly.  In front, and kneeling before the coach or bier, appear the three great Dominican saints as witnesses of the religious mystery; in the centre, St. Dominick; on the left, St. Catherine of Siena; and on the right, St. Thomas Aquinas.  In a compartment above is the Assumption. (Rome, Capitol.)

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Among the later Italian examples, where the old legendary accessories are generally omitted, there are some of peculiar elegance.  One by Ludovico Caracci, another by Domenichino, and a third by Carlo Maratti, are treated, if not with much of poetry or religious sentiment, yet with great dignity and pathos.