[Illustration:  PERUGINO.—­MADONNA AND SAINTS.  (DETAIL.)]

A beautiful Madonna enthroned is by Perugino, in the Vatican Gallery at Rome; one of the artist’s best works in power and vivacity of color.  The throne is an architectural structure of elegant simplicity of design, apparently of carved and inlaid marble.  The Virgin sits in quiet dignity, her face bent towards the bishops at her right, St. Costantius and St. Herculanus.  On the other side stand the youthful St. Laurence and St. Louis of Toulouse.  Although Perugino was an exceedingly prolific artist, he did not often choose this particular subject.  On this account the picture is especially interesting, and also because it is the original model of well known works by two of the Umbrian painter’s most illustrious pupils.

Many, indeed, were the apprentices trained in the famous bottega at Perugia, but, among them all, Raphael and Pinturicchio took the lead.  These were the two who honored their master by repeating, with modifications of their own, the beautiful composition of the Vatican.  Pinturicchio’s picture is in the Church of St. Andrea, at Perugia.  A charming feature, which he introduced, is a little St. John, standing at the foot of the throne.  Raphael’s picture is the so-called Ansidei Madonna, of the National Gallery, London, purchased by the English government, in 1885, for the fabulous price of L72,000.  The composition is here reduced to its simplest possible form, with only one saint on each side,—­St. Nicholas on the right, St. John the Baptist on the left.  The Virgin and child give no attention to these personages, but are absorbed in a book which is open on the Mother’s knee.

Raphael had no great liking for this style of picture, which was rather too formal for his taste.  It is noticeable that, in the few instances where he painted it, he took the suggestion, as here, from some previous work.  Thus his Madonna of St. Anthony, also in the National Gallery (loaned by the King of Naples), was based upon an old picture by Bernardino di Mariotto, according to the strict orders of the nuns for whose convent it was a commission.  The Baldacchino Madonna of the Pitti, at Florence, is closely akin to Bartolommeo’s composition in the same gallery.

Glancing, briefly, at these scattered examples, we learn that the enthroned Madonna belongs to every school of Italian art, and exhibits an astonishing variety of forms.  Probably it was in the North of Italy that it flourished most.  The Paduan School has its fine representation in Mantegna’s picture, already referred to; the Brescian, in Moretto’s Madonna of S. Clemente; the Veronese, in Girolamo dai Libri’s splendid altar piece in San Giorgio Maggiore; the Bergamesque, in Lotto’s Madonna of S. Bartolommeo.  Above all, it was in Venice, the Queen City of the Adriatic, that the enthroned Madonna reached the greatest popularity:  the spirit of the composition was peculiarly adapted to the Venetian love of pomp and ceremony.