MATER DOLOROSA.  In the first she appears alone, a seated or standing figure, often the head or half length only; the hands clasped, the head bowed in sorrow, tears streaming from the heavy eyes, and the whole expression intensely mournful.  The features are properly those of a woman in middle age; but in later times the sentiment of beauty predominated over that of the mother’s agony; and I have seen the sublime Mater Dolorosa transformed into a merely beautiful and youthful maiden, with such an air of sentimental grief as might serve for the loss of a sparrow.

Not so with the older heads; even those of the Carracci and the Spanish school have often a wonderful depth of feeling.

It is common in such representations to represent the Virgin with a sword in her bosom, and even with seven swords in allusion to the seven sorrows.  This very material and palpable version of the allegorical prophecy (Luke ii, 35) has been found extremely effective as an appeal to the popular feelings, so that there are few Roman Catholic churches without such a painful and literal interpretation of the text.  It occurs perpetually in prints, and there is a fine example after Vandyck; sometimes the swords are placed round her head; but there is no instance of such a figure from the best period of religious art, and it must be considered as anything but artistic:  in this case, the more materialized and the more matter of fact, the more unreal.

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STABAT MATER.  A second representation of the Madre di Dolore is that figure of the Virgin which, from the very earliest times, was placed on the right of the Crucifix, St. John the Evangelist being invariably on the left.  I am speaking here of the crucifix as a wholly ideal and mystical emblem of our faith in a crucified Saviour; not of the crucifixion as an event, in which the Virgin is an actor and spectator, and is usually fainting in the arms of her attendants.  In the ideal subject she is merely an ideal figure, at once the mother of Christ, and the personified Church.  This, I think, is evident from those very ancient carvings, and examples in stained glass, in which the Virgin, as the Church, stands on one side of the cross, trampling on a female figure which personifies Judaism or the synagogue.  Even when the allegory is less palpable, we feel that the treatment is wholly religious and poetical.

The usual attitude of the Mater Dolorosa by the crucifix is that of intense but resigned sorrow; the hands clasped, the head declined and shaded by a veil, the figure closely wrapped in a dark blue or violet mantle.  In some instances a more generally religious and ideal cast is given to the figure; she stands with outspread arms, and looking up; not weeping, but in her still beautiful face a mingled expression of faith and anguish.  This is the true conception of the sublime hymn,