minutely and exquisitely engraved on the silver face.  Whether Finiguerra was the first worker in niello to whom it occurred to fill up the lines cut in the silver with a black fluid, and then by laying on it a piece of damp paper, and forcibly rubbing it, take off the fac-simile of his design and try its effect before the final process,—­this we can not ascertain; we only know that the impression of his “Coronation” is the earliest specimen known to exist, and gave rise to the practice of cutting designs on plates of copper (instead of silver), for the purpose of multiplying impressions of them.  The pix finished by Maso in 1452 is now in the Florence Gallery in the “Salle des Bronzes.”  The invaluable print, first of its species, exists in the National Library at Paris.  There is a very exact fac-simile of it in Otley’s “History of Engraving,” Christ and the Virgin are here seated together on a lofty architectural throne:  her hands are crossed on her bosom, and she bends her meek veiled head to receive the crown, which her Son, who wears a triple tiara, places on her brow.  The saints most conspicuous are St. John the Baptist, patron of Florence and of the church for which the pix was executed, and a female saint, I believe St. Reparata, both standing; kneeling in front are St. Cosmo and St. Damian, the patrons of the Medici family, then paramount at Florence.  (Sacred and Legendary Art.)

4.  In an illuminated “Office of the Virgin,” I found a version of this subject which must be rare, and probably confined to miniatures.  Christ is seated on a throne and the Virgin kneels before him; he bends forwards, and tenderly takes her clasped hands in both his own.  An empty throne is at the right hand of Christ, over which hovers an angel bearing a crown.  This is the moment which precedes the Coronation, as the group already described in the S. Maria-in-Trastevere exhibits the moment which follows the Coronation.

5.  Finally, we must bear in mind that those effigies in which the Madonna is holding her Child, while angels place a crown upon her head, do not represent THE CORONATION properly so called, but merely the Virgin honoured as Mother of Christ and Queen of Heaven (Mater Christi, Regina Coeli); and that those representations of the Coronation which conclude a series of the life of the Virgin, and surmount her death-bed or her tomb, are historical and dramatic rather than devotional and typical.  Of this historical treatment there are beautiful examples from Cimabue down to Raphael, which will be noticed hereafter in their proper place.

THE VIRGIN OF MERCY.

Our Lady of Succour. Ital. La Madonna di Misericordia. Fr. Notre Dame de Misericorde. Ger. Maria Mutter des Erbarmens. Sp. Nuestra Senora de Grazia.