The Pieta thus conceived as a purely religious and ideal impersonation of the atoning Sacrifice, is commonly placed over the altar of the sacrament, and in many altar-pieces it forms the centre of the predella, just in front where the mass is celebrated, or on the door of the tabernacle, where the Host is deposited.

When, with the Mater Dolorosa and St. John, Mary Magdalene is introduced with her dishevelled hair, the group ceases to be properly a Pieta, and becomes a representation rather than a symbol.

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There are also examples of a yet more complex but still perfectly ideal and devotional treatment, in which the Mourning Mother is attended by saints.

A most celebrated instance of this treatment is the Pieta by Guido.  (Bologna Gal.) In the upper part of the composition, the figure of the dead Redeemer lies extended on a white shroud; behind him stands the Virgin-mother, with her eyes raised to heaven, and sad appealing face, touched with so divine a sorrow—­so much of dignity in the midst of infinite anguish, that I know nothing finer in its way.  Her hands are resignedly folded in each other, not raised, not clasped, but languidly drooping.  An angel stands at the feet of Christ looking on with a tender adoring commiseration; another, at his head, turns away weeping.  A kind of curtain divides this group from the lower part of the picture, where, assembled on a platform, stand or kneel the guardian saints of Bologna:  in the centre, the benevolent St. Charles Borromeo, who just about that time had been canonized and added to the list of the patrons of Bologna by a decree of the senate; on the right, St. Dominick and St. Petronius; on the left, St. Proculus and St. Francis.  These sainted personages look up as if adjuring the Virgin, even by her own deep anguish, to intercede for the city; she is here at once our Lady of Pity, of Succour, and of Sorrow.  This wonderful picture was dedicated, as an act of penance and piety, by the magistrates of Bologna, in 1616, and placed in their chapel in the church of the “Mendicanti,” otherwise S. Maria-della-Pieta.  It hung there for two centuries, for the consolation of the afflicted; it is now placed in the Academy of Bologna for the admiration of connoisseurs.

OUR LADY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.

Ital. La Madonna Purissima. Lat. Regina sine labe originali concepta. Spa. Nuestra Senora sin peccado concepida.  La Concepcion. Fr. La Conception de la Vierge Marie. Ger. Das Geheimniss der unbefleckten Empfaengniss Mariae.  Dec. 8.

The last and the latest subject in which the Virgin appears alone without the Child, is that entitled the “Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin;” and sometimes merely “THE CONCEPTION.”  There is no instance of its treatment in the earlier schools of art; but as one of the most popular subjects of the Italian and Spanish painters of the seventeenth century, and one very frequently misunderstood, it is necessary to go into the history of its origin.