III.

Those pictures which represent the Virgin Mary kneeling before the celestial throne, while the PADRE ETERNO or the MESSIAH extends his hand or his sceptre towards her, are generally misunderstood.  They do not represent, the Assumption, nor yet the reception of Mary in Heaven, as is usually supposed; but the election or predestination of Mary as the immaculate vehicle or tabernacle of human redemption—­the earthly parent of the divine Saviour.  I have described such a picture by Dosso Dossi, and another by Cottignola.  A third example may be cited in a yet more beautiful and celebrated picture by Francia, now in the Church at San Frediano at Lucca.  Above, in the glory of Heaven, the Virgin kneels before the throne of the Creator; she is clad in regal attire of purple and crimson and gold; and she bends her fair crowned head, and folds her hands upon her bosom with an expression of meek yet dignified resignation—­“Behold the handmaid of the Lord!”—­accepting, as woman, that highest glory, as mother, that extremest grief, to which the Divine will, as spoken by the prophets of old, had called her.  Below, on the earth and to the right hand, stand David and Solomon, as prophets and kingly ancestors:  on the left hand, St. Augustine and St. Anselm in their episcopal robes. (I have mentioned, with regard to the office in honour of the Immaculate Conception, that the idea is said to have originated in England.  I should also have added, that Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, was its strenuous advocate.) Each of these personages holds a scroll.  On that of David the reference is to the 4th and 5th verses of Psalm xxvii.—­“In the secret of his tabernacle he shall hide me.”  On that of Solomon is the text from his Song, ch. iv. 7.  On that of St. Augustine, a quotation, I presume, from his works, but difficult to make out; it seems to be, “In coelo qualis est Pater, talis est Films; qualis est Filius, talis est Mater.”  On that of St. Anselm the same inscription which is on the picture of Cottignola quoted before, “non puto vere esse.” &c., which is, I suppose, taken from his works.  In the centre, St. Anthony of Padua kneels beside the sepulchre full of lilies and roses; showing the picture to have been painted for, or under the influence of, the Franciscan Order; and, like other pictures of the same class, “an attempt to express in a visible form the idea or promise of the redemption of the human race, as existing in the Sovereign Eternal Mind before the beginning of the world.”  This altar-piece has no date, but appears to have been painted about the same time as the picture in our National Gallery (No. 179.), which came from the same church.  As a work of art it is most wonderfully beautiful.  The editors of the last excellent edition of Vasari speak of it with just enthusiasm as “Opera veramente stupenda in ogni parte!” The predella beneath, painted in chiaro-oscuro, is also of exquisite beauty; and let us hope that we shall never see it separated from the great subject, like a page or a paragraph torn out of a book by ignorant and childish collectors.