The glory was originally a sort of nimbus of a larger order, surrounding the entire figure, instead of merely the head.  It was oval in shape, like the almond or mandorla.

A picture of this class is the famous Madonna della Stella, of Fra Angelico.  It is in a beautiful Gothic tabernacle, which is the sole ornament of a cell in San Marco, Florence.  At every step in these sacred precincts, we meet some reminder of the Angelic Brother.  How the gray walls blossomed, under his brush, into forms and colors of eternal beauty!  After seeing the larger wall-paintings in corridors and refectory, this little gem seems to epitomize his choicest gifts.  A rich frame, fit setting for the jewel, encloses an outer circle of adoring angels, and within, the central panel contains only the full length figure of the Virgin with her child, against a mandorla formed of golden rays running from centre to circumference.  The Madonna is enveloped in a long, dark blue cloak, drawn around her head like a Byzantine veil.  A single star gleams above her brow, from which is derived the title of the picture.  She holds her child fondly, and he, with responsive affection, nestles against his mother, pressing his little face into her neck.  Faithful to the standards of his predecessors, and untouched by the new spirit of naturalism all about him, the monk painter preserves, in his conception, the most sacred traditions of past ages, and yet unites with them an element of love and tenderness which appeals strongly to every human heart.

[Illustration:  FRA ANGELICO.—­MADONNA DELLA STELLA.]

It is but a step from this earlier form of the Madonna in Gloria to the more modern style of the Madonna in the Sky, where the field of vision is enlarged, and we see the Virgin and child raised above the surface of the earth.  In some pictures, her elevation is very slight.  There is a curious composition, by Andrea del Sarto (Berlin Gallery), where we are puzzled to know if the Madonna is enthroned or enskied.  A flight of steps in the centre leads up as if to a throne, but above these the Virgin sits in a niche, on a bank of clouds.

In Correggio’s Madonna of St. Sebastian, in the Dresden Gallery, the Virgin seems to be descending from heaven to earth with her babe, and the surrounding clouds and cherubs rest literally upon the heads of the saints who are honored by the vision.

In other pictures the dividing line between earth and heaven is much more strongly marked.  We have a landscape below, then a stratum of intervening air, and, in the upper sky, the Madonna with her child.  The lower part of the picture is occupied by a company of saints, to whom the heavenly vision is vouchsafed; or, in rare cases, by cherubs.  The Virgin appears in a cloud of cherub heads, or accompanied by a few child-angels.  There are a few pictures in which her mother, St. Anne, sits with her.  Adoring seraphs sometimes attend, one on each side, or even sainted personages.  All these variations are exemplified in the pictures which we are to consider.