[Footnote 1:  There is another example by Paul Veronese, similar in character and treatment, in which St. John and St. Joseph are on the throne with the Virgin and child, and St. Catherine and St. Antony below.]

The composition by Michael Angelo, styled a “Holy Family,” is, though singular in treatment, certainly devotional in character, and an enthroned Virgin.  She is seated in the centre, on a raised architectural seat, holding a book; the infant Christ slumbers,—­books can teach him nothing, and to make him reading is unorthodox.  In the background on one side, St. Joseph leans over a balustrade, as if in devout contemplation; a young St. John the Baptist leans on the other side.  The grand, mannered, symmetrical treatment is very remarkable and characteristic.  There are many engravings of this celebrated composition.  In one of them, the book held by the Virgin bears on one side the text in Latin, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” On the opposite page, “Blessed be God, who has regarded the low estate of his hand-maiden.  For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.”

While the young St. John is admitted into’ such close companionship with the enthroned Madonna, his mother Elizabeth, so commonly and beautifully introduced into the Holy Families, is almost uniformly excluded.

Next in order, as accessory figures, appear some one or two or more of the martyrs, confessors, and virgin patronesses, with their respective attributes, either placed in separate niches and compartments on each side, or, when admitted within the sacred precincts where sits the Queenly Virgin Mother and her divine Son, standing, in the manner of councillors and officers of state on solemn occasions, round an earthly sovereign, all reverently calm and still; till gradually this solemn formality, this isolation of the principal characters, gave way to some sentiment which placed them in nearer relation to each other, and to the divine personages.  Occasional variations of attitude and action were introduced—­at first, a rare innovation; ere long, a custom, a fashion.  For instance;—­the doctors turn over the leaves of their great books as if seeking for the written testimonies to the truth of the mysterious Incarnation made visible in the persons of the Mother and Child; the confessors contemplate the radiant group with rapture, and seem ready to burst forth in hymns of praise; the martyrs kneel in adoration; the virgins gracefully offer their victorious palms:  and thus the painters of the best periods of art contrived to animate their sacred groups without rendering them too dramatic and too secular.

Such, then, was the general arrangement of that religious subject which is technically styled “The Madonna enthroned and attended by Saints.”  The selection and the relative position of these angelic and saintly accessories were not, as I have already observed, matters of mere taste or caprice; and an attentive observation of the choice and disposition of the attendant figures will often throw light on the original significance of such pictures, and the circumstances under which they wore painted.