to the latest times.  They are most particularly lovely in the pictures of the fifteenth century.  They kneel and strike their golden lutes, or stand and sound their silver clarions, or sit like beautiful winged children on the steps of the throne, and pipe and sing as if their spirits were overflowing with harmony as well as love and adoration.[1] In a curious picture of the enthroned Madonna and Child (Berlin Gal.), by Gentil Fabriano, a tree rises on each side of the throne, on which little red seraphim are perched like birds, singing and playing on musical instruments.  In later times, they play and sing for the solace of the divine Infant, not merely adoring, but ministering:  but these angels ministrant belong to another class of pictures.  Adoration, not service, was required by the divine Child and his mother, when they were represented simply in their divine character, and placed far beyond earthly wants and earthly associations.

[Footnote 1:  As in the picture by Lo Spagna in our National Gallery, No. 282.]

There are examples where the angels in attendance bear, not harps or lutes, but the attributes of the Cardinal Virtues, as in an altar-piece by Taddeo Gaddi at Florence. (Santa Croce, Rinuccini Chapel.)

The patriarchs, prophets, and sibyls, all the personages, in fact, who lived under the old law, when forming, in a picture or altar-piece, part, of the cortege of the throned Virgin, as types, or prophets, or harbingers of the Incarnation, are on the outside of that sacred compartment wherein she is seated with her Child.  This was the case with all the human personages down to the end of the thirteenth century; and after that time, I find the characters of the Old Testament still excluded from the groups immediately round her throne.  Their place was elsewhere allotted, at a more respectful distance.  The only exceptions I can remember, are King David and the patriarch Job; and these only in late pictures, where David does not appear as prophet, but as the ancestor of the Redeemer; and Job, only at Venice, where he is a patron saint.

The four evangelists and the twelve apostles are, in their collective character in relation to the Virgin, treated like the prophets, and placed around the altar-piece.  Where we find one or more of the evangelists introduced into the group of attendant “Sanctities” on each side of her throne, it is not in their character of evangelists, but rather as patron saints.  Thus St. Mark appears constantly in the Venetian pictures; but it is as the patron and protector of Venice.  St. John the Evangelist, a favourite attendant on the Virgin, is near her in virtue of his peculiar relation to her and to Christ; and he is also a popular patron saint.  St. Luke and St. Matthew, unless they be patrons of the particular locality, or of the votary who presents the picture, never appear.  It is the same with the apostles in their collective character as such; we find them constantly, as statues, ranged on each side of the Virgin, or as separate figures.  Thus they stand over the screen of St. Mark’s, at Venice, and also on the carved frames of the altar-pieces; but either from their number, or some other cause, they are seldom grouped round the enthroned Virgin.