In fact, the greatest mistakes in point of taste arise in general from not knowing what we ought to demand of the artist, not only in regard to the subject expressed, but with reference to the times in which he lived, and his own individuality.  An axiom which I have heard confidently set forth, that a picture is worth nothing unless “he who runs may read,” has inundated the world with frivolous and pedantic criticism.  A picture or any other work of Art, is worth nothing except in so far as it has emanated from mind, and is addressed to mind.  It should, indeed, be read like a book.  Pictures, as it has been well said, are the books of the unlettered, but then we must at least understand the language in which they are written.  And further,—­if, in the old times, it was a species of idolatry to regard these beautiful representations as endued with a specific sanctity and power; so, in these days, it is a sort of atheism to look upon them reckless of their significance, regardless of the influences through which they were produced, without acknowledgment of the mind which called them into being, without reference to the intention of the artist in his own creation.

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SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I.

In the first edition of this work, only a passing allusion was made to those female effigies, by some styled “la donna orante” (the Praying Woman) and by others supposed to represent Mary the Mother of our Lord, of which so many examples exist in the Catacombs and in the sculptured groups on the ancient Christian sarcophagi.  I know it has long been a disputed, or at least an unsettled and doubtful point, as to whether certain female figures existing on the earliest Christian monuments were or were not intended to represent the Virgin Mary.  The Protestants, on the one hand, as if still inspired by that superstition against superstition which led to the violent and vulgar destruction of so many beautiful works of art, and the Catholics on the other, jealous to maintain the authenticity of these figures as a testimony to the ancient worship of the Virgin, both appear to me to have taken an exaggerated and prejudiced view of a subject which ought to be considered dispassionately on purely antiquarian and critical grounds.  Having had the opportunity, during a late residence in Italy, of reconsidering and comparing a great number of these antique representations, and having heard the opinions of antiquarians, theologians, and artists, who had given their attention to the subject, and who occasionally differed from each other as to the weight of evidence, I have arrived at the conviction, that some of these effigies represent the Virgin Mary, and others do not.  I confess I do not believe in any authentic representation of the Virgin holding the Divine Child older than the sixth century, except when introduced into the