Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

The woodcut number 48, The Symbol of St. Matthew. Mosaic., does not exist.

The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Sacred
AND
Legendary Art.
VOL. I.

THE LATEST EDITIONS OF MRS. JAMESON’S WORKS ON
SACRED AND LEGENDARY CHRISTIAN ART.

The Fifth Edition, in 2 vols. square crown 8vo. with 19 Etchings on Copper and 187 Woodcuts, price 31s. 6d.

LEGENDS of the SAINTS and MARTYRS as represented in the Fine Arts, forming the First Series of ‘Sacred and Legendary Art.’ By Mrs. Jameson.

II. LEGENDS of the MONASTIC ORDERS. Third Edition, with 11 Etchings and 88 Woodcuts. 1 vol. 21s.

III. LEGENDS of the MADONNA. Third Edition, with 27 Etchings and 165 Woodcuts. 1 vol. 21s.

IV. HISTORY of OUR LORD as exemplified in Works of Art. By Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake. Second Edition, with 31 Etchings and 281 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 42s.

⁂ Of these 312 Illustrations, all prepared specially for the ‘History of Our Lord,’ nearly one-third of the whole number have now been engraved for the first time.

‘We have in these volumes, penned in a truth-seeking spirit and illustrated with a copious generosity which at once elucidates and adorns each section of the subject, contributions to the literature of Christian Art, for which every artist and every student of theology will confess debt of private gratitude. To thoughtful inquirers, richest mines are here opened for meditation. To minds prepared for deeper draughts to quench the thirst for knowledge, wells are dug and fountains are made to flow even in the desert tracks of time where pilgrim’s foot seldom attempts to tread. We think that Lady Eastlake has done special service in bringing into popular view recondite stores which have hitherto been sealed for public use. She has, by appeal to the early heads of Christ in the Catacombs, by reference to Christian sarcophagi of the fourth century, to ivories as old as the sixth century, and Greek MSS. and Byzantine miniatures of the ninth century, enabled the art-student to tract the history of types and antetypes, and to analyse the rudimentary germs which, from age to age accumulating strength and growing in comeliness, at length issued forth in perfected pictorial form. It is to this, the infancy of art, that at the present moment peculiar interest attaches.’

Blackwood’s Magazine.

The Assumption of the Magdalena.

Sacred
AND
Legendary Art.

BY MRS. JAMESON.

VOLUME I.
CONTAINING
LEGENDS OF THE ANGELS AND ARCHANGELS, THE EVANGELISTS,
THE APOSTLES, THE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH,
AND ST. MARY MAGDALENE,

AS REPRESENTED IN THE FINE ARTS.

SIXTH EDITION.

LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1870.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

PREFACE
To
THE THIRD EDITION.

The Author ventures to hope that, on comparing this Third Edition of ‘Sacred and Legendary Art’ with the two preceding, it will be found greatly improved, and rendered more worthy of the kind approbation and sympathy with which it has been received. The whole has been carefully revised; the references to the pictures and other works of Art corrected from the latest authorities, and many new examples have been added. All the Illustrations, which were formerly etched on copper, have been newly etched on steel; two have been omitted, and three others, as more interesting and appropriate, have been substituted; and twelve new woodcuts have been introduced. In a work so multifarious in its nature, and comprising so many hundred subjects and references, there may remain some errors and omissions, but they have not occurred from want of care; and I must not omit to express due thanks for the observations and corrections which have been forwarded to me from time to time, and which have been in this Edition carefully attended to.

A. J.

January 1857.

PREFACE
To
THE FIRST EDITION.
(1848.)

This book was begun six years ago, in 1842. It has since been often laid aside, and again resumed. In this long interval, many useful and delightful works have been written on the same subject, but still the particular ground I had chosen remained unoccupied; and, amid many difficulties, and the consciousness of many deficiencies, I was encouraged to proceed, partly by the pleasure I took in a task so congenial—partly by the conviction that such a work has long been wanted by those who are not contented with a mere manual of reference, or a mere catalogue of names. This book is intended not only to be consulted, but to be read—if it be found worth reading. It has been written for those who are, like myself, unlearned; yet less, certainly, with the idea of instructing, than from a wish to share with others those pleasurable associations, those ever new and ever various aspects of character and sentiment, as exhibited in Art, which have been a source of such vivid enjoyment to myself.

This is the utmost limit of my ambition; and, knowing that I cannot escape criticism, I am at least anxious that there should be no mistake as to purpose and intention. I hope it will be clearly understood that I have taken throughout the æsthetic and not the religious view of those productions of Art which, in as far as they are informed with a true and earnest feeling, and steeped in that beauty which emanates from genius inspired by faith, may cease to be Religion, but cannot cease to be Poetry; and as poetry only I have considered them.

The difficulty of selection and compression has been the greatest of all my difficulties; there is not a chapter in this book which might not have been more easily extended to a volume than compressed into a few pages. Every reader, however, who is interested in the subject, may supply the omissions, follow out the suggestions, and enjoy the pleasure of discovering new exceptions, new analogies, for himself. With regard to the arrangement, I am afraid it will be found liable to objections; but it is the best that, after long consideration and many changes, I could fix upon. It is not formal, nor technical, like that of a catalogue or a calendar, but intended to lead the fancy naturally from subject to subject as one opened upon another, with just sufficient order to keep the mind unperplexed and the attention unfatigued amid a great diversity of objects, scenes, stories, and characters.

The authorities for the legends have been the Legenda Aurea of Voragine, in the old French and English translations; the Flos Sanctorum of Ribadeneira, in the old French translation; the Perfetto Legendario, editions of Rome and Venice; the Legende delle Sante Vergini, Florence and Venice; the large work of Baillet, Les Vies des Saints, in thirty-two volumes, most useful for the historical authorities; and Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. All these have been consulted for such particulars of circumstance and character as might illustrate the various representations, and then compressed into a narrative as clear as I could render it. Where one authority only has been followed, it is usually placed in the margin.

The First Part contains the legends of the scriptural personages and the primitive fathers.

The Second Part contains those sainted personages who lived, or are supposed to have lived, in the first ages of Christianity, and whose real history, founded on fact or tradition, has been so disguised by poetical embroidery, that they have in some sort the air of ideal beings. As I could not undertake to go through the whole calendar, nor yet to make my book a catalogue of pictures and statues, I have confined myself to the saints most interesting and important, and (with very few exceptions) to those works of Art of which I could speak from my own knowledge.

The legends of the monastic orders, and the history of the Franciscans and Dominicans, considered merely in their connexion with the revival and development of the Fine Arts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, open so wide a range of speculation,—the characteristics of these religious enthusiasts of both sexes are so full of interest and beauty as artistic conceptions, and as psychological and philosophical studies so extraordinary, that I could not, in conscience, compress them into a few pages: they form a volume complete in itself, entitled ‘Legends of the Monastic Orders.’

The little sketches and woodcuts are trifling as illustrations, and can only assist the memory and the fancy of the reader but I regret this the less, inasmuch as those who take an interest in the subject can easily illustrate the book for themselves. To collect a portfolio of prints, including those works of art which are cited under each head as examples, with a selection from the hundreds of others which are not cited, and arrange them in the same order—with reference, not to schools, or styles, or dates, but to subject merely—would be an amusing, and I think not a profitless, occupation. It could not be done in the right spirit without leading the mind far beyond the mere pleasure of comparison and criticism, to ‘thoughts more elevate and reasonings high’ of things celestial and terrestrial, as shadowed forth in form by the wit and the hand of man.

CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN
THE FIRST VOLUME.

Woodcuts.

• [1]. Laus Deo. Liberale di Verona.
• [2]. Angel. Gaudenzio Ferrari.
• [3]. Angels singing ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo.’ Perugino.
• [4]. Seraph. Greek Emblem, 9th Century.
• [5]. Cherubim. Italian, 14th Century.
• [6]. Cherubim. Pinturicchio.
• [7]. Cherubim. Liberale di Verona.
• [8]. Part of a Glory of Angels. Ambrogio Borgognone.
• [9]. Winged Genius. Egyptian.
• [10]. Winged Figure. Nineveh Marbles.
• [11]. Seraph. Ancient Greek Mosaic.
• [12]. Angels. Orcagna.
• [13]. Fiery Cherub. Raphael.
• [14]. Angel, hymning the Virgin. Francia.
• [15]. Piping Angel. Gian Bellini.
• [16]. Greek Angel bearing the Moon.
• [17]. Angels on Horseback. Cathedral of Auxerre.
• [18]. Angels expelling Adam and Eve. N. Pisano.
• [19]. Angels who visit Abraham. Raphael.
• [20]. Plan of the Riccardi Chapel. Florence.
• [21]. Lamenting Angel. Campo Santo.
• [22]. The Angel wrestles with Jacob. Greek Miniature.
• [23]. Greek Angel. Miniature.
• [24]. Greek Angels. Mosaic.
• [25]. Angels. F. Granacci.
• [26]. Angel in a Crucifixion. Albert Dürer.
• [27]. Angels of the 17th Century.
• [28]. Angel. Poussin.
• [29]. Angels rejoicing. W. Blake.
• [30]. Two Archangels. Cimabue.
• [31]. The Archangels Michael and Raphael. Campo Santo.
• [32]. Angels bearing the Instruments of the Passion. Campo Santo.
• [33]. The Three Archangels bear the Infant Christ.
• [34]. St. Michael as Patron Saint. Angelico da Fiesole.
• [35]. Early Symbol of St. Michael and the Dragon. Bas-relief.
• [36]. St. Michael overcomes the Demon. Martin Schoen.
• [37]. The same subject. Raphael.
• [38]. St. Michael as Patron Saint. Mabuse.
• [39]. St. Michael as Angel of Judgment and Lord of Souls. Justus of Ghent.
• [40]. St. Michael as Lord of Souls. Luca Signorelli.
• [41]. Egyptian Symbol.
• [42]. St. Gabriel. Lorenzo of Monaco.
• [43]. St. Gabriel. Wilhelm of Cologne.
• [44]. Angel announcing the Death of the Virgin. Filippo Lippi.
• [45]. St. Gabriel. Van Eyck.
• [46]. St. Raphael. Murillo.
• [47]. St. Raphael. Rembrandt.
• 48. The Symbol of St. Matthew. Mosaic.
• [49]. The Tetramorph. Greek.
• [50]. Symbol of St. Luke. Mosaic.
• [51]. Symbol of St. Luke. Mosaic.
• [52]. Symbol of St. John. Mosaic.
• [53]. Symbol of St. Mark. Mosaic.
• [54]. Symbol of St. John. Miniature.
• [55]. Symbol of St. Mark. Sculpture.
• [56]. Mystical Figures of the Four Evangelists. Angelico da Fiesole.
• [57]. Figure from Nineveh. British Museum.
• [58]. Winged St. Mark. Hans Beham.
• [59]. St. Matthew. Raphael.
• [60]. St. John. Hans Hemling.
• [61]. St. John with the Eagle. Raphael.
• [62]. St. John as Prophet. Raphael.
• [63]. St. John in the Island of Patmos. Lucas van Leyden.
• [64]. The Twelve Apostles, as Sheep. Mosaic.
• [65]. St. Philip. Orcagna.
• [66]. St. Peter and St. Paul. Carlo Crivelli.
• [67]. St. Peter. Greek Type.
• [68]. St. Peter with one Key. Taddeo Gaddi.
• [69]. St. Paul. Greek Type.
• [70]. St. Peter as Pope. Cola dell’ Amatrice.
• [71]. Repentance of Peter. Bas-relief, 3rd Century.
• [72]. Crucifixion of Peter. Giotto.
• [73]. St. Peter, as Keeper of the Gates of Paradise. Simone Memmi.
• [74]. St. Andrew. Peter Vischer.
• [75]. St. James Major. Giovanni Santi.
• [76]. Santiago slaying the Moors. Carreño de Miranda.
• [77]. St. James Major as Patron. Andrea del Sarto.
• [78]. The Miracle of the Fowls. Lo Spagna.
• [79]. St. Philip. Albert Dürer.
• [80]. St. Bartholomew. Giotto.
• [81]. St. Thomas. Raphael.
• [82]. St. James Minor. L. van Leyden.
• [83]. St. Matthias. Raphael.
• [84]. Angel swinging the Censer. Albert Dürer.
• [85]. St. Jerome doing Penance. Titian.
• [86]. St. Jerome. Raphael.
• [87]. St. Jerome healing the Lion. Coll’ Antonio da Fiore.
• [88]. Venetian St. Jerome.
• [89]. The Vision of St. Augustine. Murillo.
• [90]. ‘La Pénitence de St. Jean Chrysostome.’ Albert Dürer.
• [91]. St. Mary Magdalene. Statue. Donatello.
• [92]. St. Mary Magdalene. L. van Leyden.
• [93]. St. Mary Magdalene. Timoteo della Vite.
• [94]. St. Mary Magdalene. Murillo.
• [95]. St. Mary Magdalene. Annibale Caracci.
• [96]. The Assumption of the Magdalene. Albert Dürer.
• [97]. St. Mary of Egypt dying. Pietro da Cortona.
• [98]. Angel. Raphael.

Etchings.

1 Laus Deo!

Introduction.

I. Of the Origin and General Significance of the Legends represented in Art.

We cannot look round a picture gallery—we cannot turn over a portfolio of prints after the old masters, nor even the modern engravings which pour upon us daily, from Paris, Munich, or Berlin—without perceiving how many of the most celebrated productions of Art, more particularly those which have descended to us from the early Italian and German schools, represent incidents and characters taken from the once popular legends of the Catholic Church. This form of ‘Hero-Worship’ has become, since the Reformation, strange to us—as far removed from our sympathies and associations as if it were antecedent to the fall of Babylon and related to the religion of Zoroaster, instead of being left but two or three centuries behind us and closely connected with the faith of our forefathers and the history of civilisation and Christianity. Of late years, with a growing passion for the works of Art of the Middle Ages, there has arisen among us a desire to comprehend the state of feeling which produced them, and the legends and traditions on which they are founded;—a desire to understand, and to bring to some surer critical test, representations which have become familiar without being intelligible. To enable us to do this, we must pause for a moment at the outset; and, before we plunge into the midst of things, ascend to higher ground, and command a far wider range of illustration than has yet been attempted, in order to take cognizance of principles and results which, if not new, must be contemplated in a new relation to each other.

The Legendary Art of the Middle Ages sprang out of the legendary literature of the preceding ages. For three centuries at least, this literature, the only literature which existed at the time, formed the sole mental and moral nourishment of the people of Europe. The romances of Chivalry, which long afterwards succeeded, were confined to particular classes, and left no impress on Art, beyond the miniature illuminations of a few manuscripts. This legendary literature, on the contrary, which had worked itself into the life of the people, became, like the antique mythology, as a living soul diffused through the loveliest forms of Art, still vivid and vivifying, even when the old faith in its mystical significance was lost or forgotten. And it is a mistake to suppose that these legends had their sole origin in the brains of dreaming monks. The wildest of them had some basis of truth to rest on, and the forms which they gradually assumed were but the necessary result of the age which produced them. They became the intense expression of that inner life, which revolted against the desolation and emptiness of the outward existence; of those crushed and outraged sympathies which cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace, and could nowhere find them. It will be said, ‘In the purer doctrine of the Gospel.’ But where was that to be found? The Gospel was not then the heritage of the poor: Christ, as a comforter, walked not among men. His own blessed teaching was inaccessible except to the learned: it was shut up in rare manuscripts; it was perverted and sophisticated by the passions and the blindness of those few to whom it was accessible. The bitter disputes in the early Church relative to the nature of the Godhead, the subtle distinctions and incomprehensible arguments of the theologians, the dread entertained by the predominant church of any heterodox opinions concerning the divinity of the Redeemer, had all conspired to remove Him, in his personal character of Teacher and Saviour, far away from the hearts of the benighted and miserable people—far, far away into regions speculative, mysterious, spiritual, whither they could not, dared not follow Him. In this state of things, as it has been remarked by a distinguished writer, ‘Christ became the object of a remoter, a more awful adoration. The mind began, therefore, to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in closer alliance with human sympathies.’ And the same author, after tracing in vivid and beautiful language the dangerous but natural consequences of this feeling, thus sums up the result: ‘During the perilous and gloomy days of persecution, the reverence for those who endured martyrdom for the religion of Christ had grown up out of the best feelings of man’s improved nature. Reverence gradually grew into veneration, worship, adoration: and although the more rigid theology maintained a marked distinction between the honour shown to the martyrs, and that addressed to the Redeemer and the Supreme Being, the line was too fine and invisible not to be transgressed by excited popular feeling.’[1]

‘We live,’ says the poet, ‘through admiration, hope, and love.’ Out of these vital aspirations—not indeed always ‘well or wisely placed,’ but never, as in the heathen mythology, degraded to vicious and contemptible objects—arose and spread the universal passion for the traditional histories of the saints and martyrs,—personages endeared and sanctified in all hearts, partly as examples of the loftiest virtue, partly as benign intercessors between suffering humanity and that Deity who, in every other light than as a God of Vengeance, had been veiled from their eyes by the perversities of schoolmen and fanatics, till He had receded beyond their reach, almost beyond their comprehension. Of the prevalence and of the incalculable influence of this legendary literature from the seventh to the tenth century, that is, just about the period when Modern Art was struggling into existence, we have a most striking picture in Guizot’s ‘Histoire de la Civilisation.’ ‘As after the siege of Troy (says this philosophical and eloquent writer) there were found, in every city of Greece, men who collected the traditions and adventures of heroes, and sung them for the recreation of the people, till these recitals became a national passion, a national poetry, so, at the time of which we speak, the traditions of what may be called the heroic ages of Christianity had the same interest for the nations of Europe. There were men who made it their business to collect them, to transcribe them, to read or recite them aloud, for the edification and delight of the people. And this was the only literature, properly so called, of that time.‘

Now, if we go back to the authentic histories of the sufferings and heroism of the early martyrs, we shall find enough there, both of the wonderful and the affecting, to justify the credulity and enthusiasm of the unlettered people, who saw no reason why they should not believe in one miracle as well as in another. In these universally diffused legends, we may recognise the means, at least one of the means, by which a merciful Providence, working through its own immutable laws, had provided against the utter depravation, almost extinction, of society. Of the ‘Dark Ages,’ emphatically so called, the period to which I allude was perhaps the darkest; it was ‘of Night’s black arch the key-stone.’ At a time when men were given over to the direst evils that can afflict humanity,—ignorance, idleness, wickedness, misery; at a time when the every-day incidents of life were a violation of all the moral instincts of mankind; at a time when all things seemed abandoned to a blind chance, or the brutal law of force; when there was no repose, no refuge, no safety anywhere; when the powerful inflicted, and the weak endured, whatever we can conceive of most revolting and intolerable; when slavery was recognised by law throughout Europe; when men fled to cloisters, to shut themselves from oppression, and women to shield themselves from outrage; when the manners were harsh, the language gross; when all the softer social sentiments, as pity, reverence, tenderness, found no resting-place in the actual relations of life; when for the higher ranks there was only the fierce excitement of war, and on the humbler classes lay the weary, dreary monotony of a stagnant existence, poor in pleasures of every kind, without aim, without hope; then—wondrous reaction of the ineffaceable instincts of good implanted within us!—arose a literature which reversed the outward order of things, which asserted and kept alive in the hearts of men those pure principles of Christianity which were outraged in their daily actions; a literature in which peace was represented as better than war, and sufferance more dignified than resistance; which exhibited poverty and toil as honourable, and charity as the first of virtues; which held up to imitation and emulation, self-sacrifice in the cause of good and contempt of death for conscience’ sake: a literature, in which the tenderness, the chastity, the heroism of woman, played a conspicuous part; which distinctly protested against slavery, against violence, against impurity in word and deed; which refreshed the fevered and darkened spirit with images of moral beauty and truth; revealed bright glimpses of a better land, where ‘the wicked cease from troubling,’ and brought down the angels of God with shining wings and bearing crowns of glory, to do battle with the demons of darkness, to catch the fleeting soul of the triumphant martyr, and carry it at once into a paradise of eternal blessedness and peace!

Now the Legendary Art of the three centuries which comprise the revival of learning, was, as I have said, the reflection of this literature, of this teaching. Considered in this point of view, can we easily overrate its interest and importance?

When, after the long period of darkness which followed upon the decline of the Roman Empire, the Fine Arts began to revive, the first, and for several ages the only, impress they received was that of the religious spirit of the time. Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Architecture, as they emerged one after another from the ‘formless void,’ were pressed into the service of the Church. But it is a mistake to suppose that in adroitly adapting the reviving Arts to her purposes, in that magnificent spirit of calculation which at all times characterised her, the Church from the beginning selected the subjects, or dictated the use that was to be made of them. We find, on the contrary, edicts and councils repressing the popular extravagances in this respect, and denouncing those apocryphal versions of sacred events and traditions which had become the delight of the people. But vain were councils and edicts; the tide was too strong to be so checked. The Church found herself obliged to accept and mould to her own objects the exotic elements she could not eradicate. She absorbed, so to speak, the evils and errors she could not expel. There seems to have been at this time a sort of compromise between the popular legends, with all their wild mixture of northern and classical superstitions, and the Church legends properly so called. The first great object to which reviving Art was destined, was to render the Christian places of worship a theatre of instruction and improvement for the people, to attract and to interest them by representations of scenes, events, and personages, already so familiar as to require no explanation, appealing; at once to their intelligence and their sympathies; embodying in beautiful shapes (beautiful at least in their eyes) associations and feelings and memories deep-rooted in their very hearts, and which had influenced, in no slight degree, the progress of civilisation, the development of mind. Upon these creations of ancient Art we cannot look as those did for whom they were created; we cannot annihilate the centuries which lie between us and them; we cannot, in simplicity of heart, forget the artist in the image he has placed before us, nor supply what may be deficient in his work, through a reverentially excited fancy. We are critical, not credulous. We no longer accept this polytheistic form of Christianity; and there is little danger, I suppose, of our falling again into the strange excesses of superstition to which it led. But if we have not much sympathy with modern imitations of Mediæval Art, still less should we sympathise with that narrow puritanical jealousy which holds the monuments of a real and earnest faith in contempt. All that God has permitted once to exist in the past should be considered as the possession of the present; sacred for example or warning, and held as the foundation on which to build up what is better and purer. It should seem an established fact, that all revolutions in religion, in government, and in art, which begin in the spirit of scorn, and in a sweeping destruction of the antecedent condition, only tend to a reaction. Our puritanical ancestors chopped off the heads of Madonnas and Saints, and paid vagabonds to smash the storied windows of our cathedrals;—now, are these rejected and outraged shapes of beauty coming back to us, or are we not rather going back to them? As a Protestant, I might fear lest in doing so we confound the eternal spirit of Christianity with the mutable forms in which it has deigned to speak to the hearts of men, forms which must of necessity vary with the degree of social civilisation, and bear the impress of the feelings and fashions of the age which produced them; but I must also feel that we ought to comprehend, and to hold in due reverence, that which has once been consecrated to holiest aims, which has shown us what a magnificent use has been made of Art, and how it may still be adapted to good and glorious purposes, if, while we respect these time-consecrated images and types, we do not allow them to fetter us, but trust in the progressive spirit of Christianity to furnish us with new impersonations of the good—new combinations of the beautiful. I hate the destructive as I revere the progressive spirit. We must laugh if any one were to try and persuade us that the sun was guided along his blazing path by a ‘fair-haired god who touched a golden lyre;’ but shall we therefore cease to adore in the Apollo Belvedere the majestic symbol of light, the most divine impersonation of intellectual power and beauty? So of the corresponding Christian symbols:—may that time never come, when we shall look up to the effigy of the winged and radiant angel trampling down the brute-fiend, without a glow of faith in the perpetual supremacy and final triumph of good over evil!

It is about a hundred years since the passion, or the fashion, for collecting works of Art, began to be generally diffused among the rich and the noble of this land; and it is amusing to look back and to consider the perversions and affectations of the would-be connoisseurship during this period;—the very small stock of ideas on which people set up a pretension to taste—the false notions, the mixture of pedantry and ignorance, which everywhere prevailed. The publication of Richardson’s book, and Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, had this advantage,—that they, to a certain degree, diffused a more elevated idea of Art as Art, and that they placed connoisseurship on a better and truer basis. In those days we had Inquiries into the Principles of Taste, Treatises on the Sublime and Beautiful, Anecdotes of Painting; and we abounded in Antiquarian Essays on disputed Pictures and mutilated Statues: but then, and up to a late period, any inquiry into the true spirit and significance of works of Art, as connected with the history of Religion and Civilisation, would have appeared ridiculous—or perhaps dangerous:—we should have had another cry of ‘No Popery,’ and acts of parliament forbidding the importation of Saints and Madonnas. It was fortunate, perhaps, that connoisseurs meddled not with such high matters. They talked volubly and harmlessly of ‘hands,’ and ‘masters,’ and ‘schools,’—of ‘draperies,’ of ‘tints,’ of ‘handling,’—of ‘fine heads,’ ‘fine compositions;’ of ‘the grace of Raphael,’ and of the ‘Correggiosity of Correggio.’ The very manner in which the names of the painters were pedantically used instead of the name of the subject, is indicative of this factitious feeling; the only question at issue was, whether such a picture was a genuine ‘Raphael?’ such another a genuine ‘Titian?’ The spirit of the work—whether that was genuine; how far it was influenced by the faith and the condition of the age which produced it; whether the conception was properly characteristic, and of what it was characteristic—of the subject? or of the school? or of the time?—whether the treatment corresponded to the idea within our own souls, or was modified by the individuality of the artist, or by received conventionalisms of all kinds?—these were questions which had not then occurred to any one; and I am not sure that we are much wiser even now: yet, setting aside all higher considerations, how can we do common justice to the artist, unless we can bring his work to the test of truth? and how can we do this, unless we know what to look for, what was intended as to incident, expression, character? One result of our ignorance has been the admiration wasted on the flimsy mannerists of the later ages of Art; men who apparently had no definite intention in anything they did, except a dashing outline, or a delicate finish, or a striking and attractive management of colour.

It is curious, this general ignorance with regard to the subjects of Mediæval Art, more particularly now that it has become a reigning fashion among us. We find no such ignorance with regard to the subjects of Classical Art, because the associations connected with them form a part of every liberal education. Do we hear any one say, in looking at Annibal Caracci’s picture in the National Gallery, ‘Which is Silenus, and which is Apollo?’ Who ever confounds a Venus with a Minerva, or a Vestal with an Amazon; or would endure an undraped Juno, or a beardless Jupiter? Even the gardener in Zeluco knew Neptune by his ‘fork,’ and Vulcan by his ‘lame leg.’ We are indeed so accustomed, in visiting the churches and the galleries abroad, and the collections at home, to the predominance of sacred subjects, that it has become a mere matter of course, and excites no particular interest and attention. We have heard it all accounted for by the fact that the Church and churchmen were the first, and for a long time the only, patrons of Art. In every sacred edifice, and in every public or private collection enriched from the plunder of sacred edifices, we look for the usual proportion of melancholy martyrdoms and fictitious miracles,—for the predominance of Madonnas and Magdalenes, St. Catherines and St. Jeromes: but why these should predominate, why certain events and characters from the Old and the New Testament should be continually repeated, and others comparatively neglected; whence the predilection for certain legendary personages, who seemed to be multiplied to infinity, and the rarity of others; of this we know nothing.

We have learned, perhaps, after running through half the galleries and churches in Europe, to distinguish a few of the attributes and characteristic figures which meet us at every turn, yet without any clear idea of their meaning, derivation, or relative propriety. The palm of victory, we know, designates the martyr triumphant in death. We so far emulate the critical sagacity of the gardener in Zeluco that we have learned to distinguish St. Laurence by his gridiron, and St. Catherine by her wheel. We are not at a loss to recognise the Magdalene’s ‘loose hair and lifted eye,’ even when without her skull and her vase of ointment. We learn to know St. Francis by his brown habit and shaven crown and wasted ardent features; but do we distinguish him from St. Anthony, or St. Dominick? As for St. George and the dragon—from the St. George of the Louvre,—Raphael’s,—who sits his horse with the elegant tranquillity of one assured of celestial aid, down to him ‘who swings on a sign post at mine hostess’s door,’—he is our familiar acquaintance. But who is that lovely being in the first blush of youth, who, bearing aloft the symbolic cross, stands with one foot on the vanquished dragon? ‘That is a copy after Raphael.’ And who is that majestic creature holding her palm branch, while the unicorn crouches at her feet? ‘That is the famous Moretto at Vienna.’ Are we satisfied?—not in the least! but we try to look wiser, and pass on.

In the old times the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects could always reckon securely on certain associations and certain sympathies in the minds of the spectators. We have outgrown these associations, we repudiate these sympathies. We have taken these works from their consecrated localities, in which they once held each their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and our dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our side-boards—and now what do they say to us? That Magdalene, weeping amid her hair, who once spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner—that Sebastian, arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance spoke of courage and hope to the tyrant-ridden serf,—that poor tortured slave, to whose aid St. Mark comes sweeping down from above,—can they speak to us of nothing save flowing lines and correct drawing and gorgeous colour? must we be told that one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the third a Tintoret, before we dare to melt in compassion or admiration?—or the moment we refer to their ancient religious signification and influence, must it be with disdain or with pity? This, as it appears to me, is to take not a rational, but rather a most irrational as well as a most irreverent, view of the question; it is to confine the pleasure and improvement to be derived from works of Art within very narrow bounds; it is to seal up a fountain of the richest poetry, and to shut out a thousand ennobling and inspiring thoughts. Happily there is a growing appreciation of these larger principles of criticism as applied to the study of Art. People look at the pictures which hang round their walls, and have an awakening suspicion that there is more in them than meets the eye—more than mere connoisseurship can interpret; and that they have another, a deeper, significance than has been dreamed of by picture dealers and picture collectors, or even picture critics.

II. Of the Distinction to be drawn between the Devotional and the Historical Subjects.

At first, when entering on a subject so boundless and so diversified, we are at a loss for some leading classification which shall be distinct and intelligible, without being mechanical. It appears to me, that all sacred representations, in as far as they appeal to sentiment and imagination, resolve themselves into two great classes, which I shall call the DEVOTIONAL and the HISTORICAL.

Devotional pictures are those which portray the objects of our veneration with reference only to their sacred character, whether standing singly or in company with others. They place before us no action or event, real or supposed. They are neither portrait nor history. A group of sacred personages where no action is represented, is called in Italian a ‘sacra conversazione:’ the word conversazione, which signifies a society in which there is communion, being here, as it appears to me, used with peculiar propriety. All subjects, then, which exhibit to us sacred personages, alone or in groups, simply in the character of superior beings, must be considered as devotionally treated.

But a sacred subject, without losing wholly its religious import, becomes historical the moment it represents any story, incident, or action, real or imagined. All pictures which exhibit the events of Scripture story, all those which express the actions, miracles, and martyrdoms of saints, come under this class; and to this distinction I must call the attention of the reader, requesting that it may be borne in mind throughout this work.

We must also recollect that a story, action, or fact may be so represented as to become a symbol expressive of an abstract idea: and some scriptural and some legendary subjects may be devotional, or historical, according to the sentiment conveyed: for example, the Crucifixion and the Last Supper may be so represented as either to exhibit an event, or to express a symbol of our Redemption. The raising of Lazarus exhibits, in the catacombs, a mystical emblem of the general resurrection; in the grand picture by Sebastian del Piombo, in our National Gallery, it is a scene from the life of our Saviour. Among the legendary subjects, the penance of the Magdalene, and St. Martin dividing his cloak, may be merely incidents, or they may be symbolical, the first of penitence, the latter of charity, in the general sense. And, again, there are some subjects which, though expressing a scene or an action, are wholly mystical and devotional in their import; as the vision of St. Augustine, and the marriage of St. Catherine.

Among the grandest of the devotional subjects, we may reckon those compositions which represent the whole celestial hierarchy; the divine personages of the Trinity, the angels and archangels, and the beatified spirits of the just. Such is the subject called the ‘Paradiso,’ so often met with in pictures and ecclesiastical decoration, where Christ is enthroned in glory: such is also the Coronation of the Virgin, that ancient and popular symbol of the triumph of Religion or the Church; the Adoration of the Lamb; and the Last Judgment, from the Apocalypse. The order of precedence in these sacred assemblages was early settled by ecclesiastical authority, and was almost as absolute as that of a modern code of honour. First after the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, as Regina Angelorum, and St. John the Baptist: then, in order, the Evangelists; the Patriarchs; the Prophets; the Apostles; the Fathers; the Bishops; the Martyrs; the Hermits; the Virgins; the Monks, Nuns, and Confessors.

As examples, I may cite the Paradiso of Angelico, in the Florence Academy; the Coronation of the Virgin by Hans Memling, in the Wallerstein collection, which contains not less than fifty-two figures, all individualised with their proper attributes; and which, if it were possible, should be considered in contrast with the Coronation by Angelico. The Flemish painter seems to have carried his intense impression of earthly and individual life into the regions of heaven; the Italian, through a purer inspiration, seems to have brought all Paradise down before us upon earth. In the Adoration of the Lamb by Van Eyck, there are not fewer than two hundred figures. For the Last Judgment, the grand compositions of Orcagna in the Campo Santo,—of Luca Signorelli and Angelico at Orvieto,—and the fresco of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, may be consulted.

Where the usual order is varied, there is generally some reason for it; for instance, in the exaltation of a favourite saint, as we sometimes find St. Dominick and St. Francis by the side of St. Peter and St. Paul: and among the miniatures of that extraordinary MS., the Hortus Deliciarum, now at Strasbourg, painted for a virgin abbess, there is a ‘Paradiso’ in which the painter, either by her command or in compliment to her, has placed the virgins immediately after the angels.

The representation of the Virgin and Child with saints grouped around them, is a devotional subject familiar to us from its constant recurrence. It also frequently happens that the tutelary saint of the locality, or the patron saint of the votary, is represented as seated on a raised throne in the centre; and other saints, though under every other circumstance taking a superior rank, become here accessories, and are placed on each side or lower down in the picture: for example, where St. Augustine is enthroned, and St. Peter and St. Paul stand on each side, as in a picture by B. Vivarini,[2] or where St. Barbara is enthroned, and Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine stand on each side, as in a picture by Matteo di Siena.[3]

In such pictures, the votary or donor is often introduced kneeling at the feet of his patron, either alone or accompanied by his wife and other members of his family: and to express the excess of his humility, he is sometimes so diminutive in proportion to the colossal object of his veneration, as to be almost lost to sight; we have frequent examples of this naïveté of sentiment in the old mosaics and votive altar-pieces; for instance, in a beautiful old fresco at Assisi, where the Magdalene, a majestic figure about six feet high, holds out her hand in benediction to a little Franciscan friar about a foot in height: but it was abandoned as barbarous in the later schools of Art, and the votary, when retained, appears of the natural size; as in the Madonna del Donatore of Raphael[4], where Sigismond Conti is almost the finest and most striking part of that inestimable picture: and in the Madonna of the Meyer family by Holbein.[5]

When a bishop is introduced into a group of saints kneeling, while all the others are standing, he may be supposed to be the Donatore or Divoto, the person who presents the picture. When he is standing, he is one of the bishop-patrons or bishop-martyrs, of whom there are some hundreds, and who are more difficult to discriminate than any other pictured saints.

And this leads me to the subject of the so-called anachronisms in devotional subjects, where personages who lived at different and distant periods of time are found grouped together. It is curious to find the critics of the last century treating with pity and ridicule, as the result of ignorance or a barbarous unformed taste, the noblest and most spiritual conceptions of poetic art. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds had so little idea of the true object and feeling of such representations, that he thinks it necessary to apologise for the error of the painter, or the mistaken piety of his employer. We must remember that the personages here brought together in their sacred character belong no more to our earth, but to heaven and eternity: for them there is no longer time or place; they are here assembled together in the perpetual ‘communion of saints,’—immortal contemporaries in that kingdom where the Angel of the Apocalypse proclaimed ‘that there should be time no longer.’

Such groups are sometimes arranged with an artless solemnity, all the personages standing and looking straight out of the picture at the worshipper. Sometimes there is a touch of dramatic sentiment, which, without interfering with the solemn devotional feeling, lights up the whole with the charm of a purpose: as in the Correggio at Parma, where St. Jerome presents his translation of the Scriptures to the infant Christ, while an angel turns the leaves, and Mary Magdalene, symbol of redemption and reconciliation, bends to kiss the feet of the Saviour.

Our ancestors of the middle ages were not particular in drawing that strong line of demarcation between the classical, Jewish and Christian periods of history, that we do. They saw only Christendom every where; they regarded the past only in relation to Christianity. Hence we find in the early ecclesiastical monuments and edifices such a strange assemblage of pagan, scriptural, and Christian worthies; as, Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, King David, Judas Maccabeus, King Arthur, St. George, Godfrey of Boulogne, Lucretia, Virginia, Judith, St. Elizabeth, St. Bridget (as in the Cross of Nuremburg). In the curious Manual of Greek Art, published by Didron, we find the Greek philosophers and poets entering into a scheme of ecclesiastical decoration, as in the carved stalls in the Cathedral of Ulm, where Solon, Apollonius, Plutarch, Plato, Sophocles, are represented, holding each a scroll, on which is inscribed a passage from their works, interpreted into an allusion to the coming of Christ: and I have seen a picture of the Nativity in which the sibyls are dancing hand-in-hand around the cradle of the new-born Saviour. This may appear profane to some, but the comprehension of the whole universe within the pale of Christianity strikes me as being in the most catholic, as well as in the most poetical, spirit.

It is in devotional subjects that we commonly find those anthropomorphic representations of the Divinity which shock devout people; and which no excuse or argument can render endurable to those who see in them only ignorant irreverence, or intentional profaneness. It might be pleaded that the profaneness is not intentional; that emblems and forms are, in the imitative arts, what figures of speech are in language; that only through a figure of speech can any attempt be made to place the idea of Almighty Power before us. Familiar expressions, consecrated by Scripture usage, represent the Deity as reposing, waking, stretching forth his hand, sitting on a throne; as pleased, angry, vengeful, repentant; and the ancient painters, speaking the language proper to their art, appear to have turned these emblematical words into emblematical pictures. I forbear to say more on this point, because I have taken throughout the poetical and not the religious view of Art, and this is an objection which must be left, as a matter of feeling, to the amount of candour and knowledge in the critical reader.

In the sacred subjects, properly called HISTORICAL, we must be careful to distinguish between those which are Scriptural, representing scenes from the Old or New Testament; and those which are Legendary.

Of the first, for the present; I do not speak, as they will be fully treated hereafter.

The historical subjects from the lives of the saints consist principally of Miracles and Martyrdoms.

In the first, it is worth remarking that we have no pictured miracle which is not imitated from the Old or the New Testament (unless it be an obvious emblem, as where the saint carries his own head). There is no act of supernatural power related of any saint which is not recorded of some great scriptural personage. The object was to represent the favourite patron as a copy of the great universal type of beneficence, Christ our Redeemer. And they were not satisfied that the resemblance should lie in character only; but should emulate the power of Christ in his visible actions. We must remember that the common people of the middle ages did not, and could not, distinguish between miracles accredited by the testimony of Scripture, and those which were fabrications, or at least exaggerations. All miracles related as divine interposition were to them equally possible, equally credible. If a more extended knowledge of the natural laws renders us in these days less credulous, it also shows us that many things were possible, under particular conditions, which were long deemed supernatural.

We find in the legendary pictures, that the birth of several saints is announced by an angel, or in a dream, as in the stories of St. Catherine, St. Roch, &c. They exhibit precocious piety and wisdom, as in the story of St. Nicholas, who also calms a tempest, and guides the storm-tossed vessel safe to land. They walk on the water, as in the stories of St. Raymond and St. Hyacinth; or a river divides, to let them pass, as in the story of St. Alban. Saints are fed and comforted miraculously, or delivered from prison by angels; or resist fire, like the ‘Three Children.’ The multiplication of bread, and the transformation of water into wine, are standing miracles. But those which most frequently occur in pictures, are the healing of the sick, the lame, the blind; the casting out of demons, the restoration of the dead, or some other manifestation of compassionate and beneficent power.

Some of the pictured legends are partly scriptural, partly historical, as the story of St. Peter; others are clearly religious apologues founded on fact or tradition, as those of St. Mary of Egypt and St. Christopher; others are obviously and purely allegorical, as the Greek story of St. Sophia (i. e. Heavenly Wisdom, ΣΟΦΙΑ) and her celestial progeny, St. Faith, St. Hope, and St. Charity, all martyred by the blind and cruel Pagans. The names sound as if borrowed from the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress;’ and it is curious to find Bunyan’s allegorical legend, the favourite picture-book of the people, appearing just at the time when the legends and pictures of the saints became objects of puritanical horror, and supplying their place in the popular imagination.

Martyrdoms are only too common: they present to us Christianity under its most mystical aspect—the deification of suffering; but to render these representations effective, they should be pathetic without being terrible, they should speak to us

Of melancholy fear subdued by faith,

Of blessed consolations in distress;

but not of the horrid cruelty of man towards man. It has been well remarked by my friend M. Rio, (to whose charming and eloquent exposition of Christian Art I refer with ever-new delight,) that the early painters of Western Christendom avoided these subjects, and that their prevalence in ecclesiastical decoration marked the decline of religious feeling, and the degeneracy of Art. But this remark does not apply to Byzantine Art; for we find from the exact description of a picture of the martyrdom of St. Euphemia (both the picture and the description dating from the third century), that such representations were then common, and were appealed to in the same manner as now, to excite the feelings of the people.

The martyrdoms generally met with are those of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Stephen Protomartyr, St. Laurence, St. Catherine, and St. Sebastian. These we find everywhere, in all countries and localities. Where the patron of the church or chapel is a martyr, his martyrdom holds a conspicuous place, often over the high altar, and accompanied by all the moving circumstances which can excite the pity, or horror, or enthusiasm of the pious votaries; but in the best examples we find the saint preparing for his death, not suffering the torments actually inflicted; so that the mind is elevated by the sentiment of his courage, not disturbed and disgusted by the spectacle of his agonies.

III. Of certain Patron Saints,
WHO ARE COMMONLY GROUPED TOGETHER IN WORKS OF ART, OR WHO BELONG TO PARTICULAR COUNTRIES, CITIES, OR LOCALITIES.

While such assemblages of holy persons as are found grouped together in devotional pictures are to be considered as quite independent of chronology, we shall find that the selection has been neither capricious nor arbitrary, and, with a little consideration, we shall discover the leading idea in the mind of the artist that, at least, which was intended to be conveyed to the mind of the spectator, and which was much more intelligible in former times than it is now.

Sometimes we find certain saints placed in companionship, because they are the joint patrons and protectors of the city or locality for which the picture was painted. Thus in the Bologna pictures we constantly find the bishop St. Petronius, St. Eloy, St. Dominick, and the warrior St. Proculus; while in the Venetian pictures we have perpetual St. Marks, St. Georges, and St. Catherines.

Or, secondly, they are connected by kindred powers and attributes. Thus we find St. Sebastian, the patron against pestilence, in company with St. Roch, who ministered to the sick of the plague. Thus St. Catherine and St. Jerome, the two patrons of school theology, are often found in companionship. Where St. Catherine and St. Barbara are found together, the first figures as patroness of the ecclesiastical, and the second of the military, power—or they represent respectively the contemplative and the active life.

Or, thirdly, they are combined in the fancy by some inevitable association; as St. Augustine and St. Stephen are often in the same picture, because St. Augustine dedicated some of his most eloquent works to the glory of the martyr.

Or they were friends on earth, for which reason St. Cyprian and St. Cornelius are placed together.

Or their relics repose in the same spot; whence St. Stephen and St. Laurence have become almost inseparable. When St. Vincent and St. Laurence are placed together, (as in a lovely composition of Parmigiana where they sit reading out of the same book,) it is because of the similarity of their fate, and that the popular tradition supposed them to be brothers.

A point of more general importance, and capable of more definite explanation, is the predominance of certain sacred personages in particular schools of Art. St. Cosmo and St. Damian, for instance, are perpetually recurring in the Florentine pictures as the patron saints of the Medici family. In the Lombard pictures St. Ambrose is often found without his compeers—not as doctor of the Church, but as bishop of Milan. In the Siena pictures, we may look for the nun St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Ansano, the apostle of the Sienese, holding his banner and palm. And in the Augustine chapels and churches, St. Augustine figures, not as doctor of the Church, but as patriarch of the Order.

A bishop-martyr, holding his palm, and not otherwise designated either by name or attribute, would be—in one if Perugino’s pictures, St. Ercolano or St. Costanzo; in a Florentine picture, St. Donato or St. Romulo; if the picture were painted in the March of Ancona, it would probably be St. Apollinaris of Ravenna; at Naples it would be St. Januarius; at Paris, or in a picture painted for a French church, of which there are many in Italy, it would be St. Denis; and in German prints, St. Boniface or St. Lambert. I need not further multiply examples.

If the locality from which the picture came will sometimes determine the names of the personages, so the personages represented will often explain the purpose and intended situation of the picture. There is in Lord Ashburton’s gallery a noble group representing together St. Peter, St. Leonard, St. Martha, and Mary Magdalene. Such a combination points it out at once as intended for a charitable institution, and, on enquiry, we find that it was painted for the chapel of a brotherhood associated to redeem prisoners, to ransom slaves, to work for the poor, and to convert the sinner to repentance. Many such interesting and instructive analogies will be pointed out in the course of the following pages, and the observer of works of Art will discover others for himself.

I add here, in alphabetical order, those countries and localities of which the patron saints are distinguished in works of Art.[6]

• Ancona: St. Cyriacus, Bishop; and his mother Anna, Martyr.
• Arezzo: St. Donato, Bishop.
• Asti, Novara, and all through the cities of Piedmont and the north of Italy, we find the Warrior, St. Maurice, and his companions St. Secundus, St. Alexander, and the other Martyrs of the Theban Legion.
• Augsburg: St. Ulrich, Bishop; St. Afra, Martyr.
• Austria: St. Leopold, St. Stephen, St. Maximilian, St. Coloman.
• Bamberg: St. Henry and St. Cunegunda, Emperor and Empress.
• Barcelona: St. Eulalia, Martyr. (In Spanish pictures only.)
• Bavaria: St. George, Martyr.
• Bergamo: St. Alexander, Warrior; St. Grata, Widow.
• Bohemia: St. John Nepomuck, Priest; St. Wenceslaus, King; St. Ludmilla, Queen; St. Vitus, young Martyr; St. Procopius, Hermit.
• Bologna: St. Petronius, Bishop; St. Dominick, Friar; St. Proculus, Warrior Martyr; St. Eloy (Eligio), Bishop and Smith.
• Brescia: St. Faustinus and Jovita; St. Julia, St. Afra, Martyrs.
• Bruges: St. John the Baptist.
• Burgundy: St. Andrew, Apostle.
• Cologne: The Three Kings; St. Ursula, Virgin Martyr; St. Gereon, Warrior Martyr.
• Como: St. Abbondio, Bishop.
• Cortona: St. Margaret, Nun and Penitent.
• Cremona: St. Omobuono, Secular Habit.
• Ferrara: St. Geminiano, Bishop; St. George, Martyr; St. Barbara, Martyr.
• Fiesole: St. Romolo, Bishop.
• Florence: St. John the Baptist; St. Zenobio, St. Antonino, Bishops; St. Reparata, Virgin Martyr; St. Cosmo and Damian (the Apothecary Saints, especial patrons of the Medici family); St. Verdiana, Nun; St. Miniato, Warrior.
• France: St. Michael, Angel; St. Dionysius (Denis), Bishop; St. Geneviève, Virgin; St. Martin, Bishop.
• Genoa: St. George, St. Laurence, Martyrs.
• Ghent: St. Bavon, Prince and Hermit.
• Grenoble: St. Hugh the Carthusian.
• Ireland: St. Patrick, Bishop; St. Bridget, Abbess.
• Lucca: St. Martin, Bishop; St. Frediano, Priest; St. Zita, Virgin.
• Liege: St. Hubert, Bishop and Huntsman; St. Lambert, Bishop.
• Madrid: St. Isidore, Labourer; St. Dominick, Friar; (Patron of the Escurial, St. Laurence).
• Mantua: St. Andrew; St. Barbara; St. George and St. Longinus, Warrior Saints.
• Marseilles and all Provence: St. Lazarus; St. Mary Magdalen; St. Martha; St. Marcella.
• Messina: St. Agatha, Martyr.
• Milan: St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor; St. Gervasius and St. Protasius, Martyrs; St. Maurice, St. Victor, Warriors.
• Modena: St. Geminiano, Bishop. (In Pictures of the Correggio School.)
• Naples: St. Januarius, Martyr.
• Novara: St. Gaudenzio, Bishop.
• Nuremburg: St. Laurence, Martyr; St. Sebald, Pilgrim and Hermit. (The latter an important person in pictures and prints of the Albert Dürer school.)
• Padua: St. Anthony of Padua, Friar.
• Paris: St. Geneviève, Virgin; St. Germain, Bishop; St. Hippolitus, Martyr.
• Parma: St. John, B.; St. Thomas the Apostle; St. Bernard, Monk; St. Hilary (Ilario), Bishop.
• Perugia: St. Ercolano and St. Costanzo, Bishops.
• Piacenza: St. Justina, Martyr; St. Antoninus, Warrior (Theban Legion).
• Piedmont and Savoy: St. John, B.; St. Maurice and St. George, Warriors; St. Amadeus, King.
• Pisa: St. Ranieri, Hermit; St. Torpé, Warrior; St. Ephesus and St. Potita, Warriors. (These only in the ancient Pisan school.)
• Ravenna: St. Appolinaris, Bishop.
• Rimini: St. Juliana, Martyr. (A young saint, popular all through the north and down the east coast of Italy.)
• Seville: St. Leander, Bishop; St. Justina, St. Rufina, Sisters and Martyrs. (These are only found in Spanish pictures.)
• Sicily: St. Vitus, Martyr; St. Rosalia, Recluse (Palermo); St. Agatha (Messina), St. Lucia (Syracuse), Martyrs.
• Siena: St. Ansano, Martyr; St. Catherine of Siena, Nun; St. Bernardino, Friar.
• Thuringia and all that part of Saxony: St. Elizabeth of Hungary; St. Boniface, Bishop.
• Toledo: St. Ildefonso, Bishop; and St. Leocadia, Martyr. (Only in Spanish pictures.)
• Treviso: St. Liberale, Warrior.
• Turin: St. John the Baptist; St. Maurice, Warrior.
• Umbria: All through this region and the eastern coast of Italy, very important in respect to Art, the favourite saints are—St. Nicholas, Bishop; St. Francis of Assisi, Friar; St. Clara, Nun; St. Julian, Martyr; and St. Catherine, Virgin Martyr.
• Valencia: St. Vincent, Martyr.
• Venice: St. Mark, Apostle; St. George, St. Theodore, Warriors; St. Nicholas, Bishop; St. Catherine, St. Christina, Virgin Martyrs.
• Vercelli: St. Eusebius, Bishop; St. Thronestus, Warrior (Theban Legion).
• Verona: St. Zeno, Bishop; St. Fermo, Martyr; St. Euphemia, Martyr.

Votive Pictures are those which have been dedicated in certain religious edifices, in fulfilment of vows; either as the expression of thanksgiving for blessings which have been vouchsafed, or propitiative against calamities to be averted. The far greater number of these pictures commemorate an escape from danger, sickness, death; and more especially, some visitation of the plague, that terrible and frequent scourge of the middle ages. The significance of such pictures is generally indicated by the presence of St. Sebastian or St. Roch, the patrons against the plague; or St. Cosmo and St. Damian, the healing and medical saints; accompanied by the patron saints of the country or locality, if it be a public act of devotion; or, if dedicated by private or individual piety, the donor kneels, presented by his own patron saint. In general, though not always, this expressive group is arranged in attendance on the enthroned Madonna and her divine Son, as the universal protectors from all evil. Such pictures are among the most interesting and remarkable of the works of sacred Art which remain to us, and have often a pathetic and poetical beauty, and an historical significance, which it is a chief purpose of these volumes to interpret and illustrate.

A Venetian votive picture against the plague.
S^t. Damian. S^t. Mark. S^t. Roch. A. J. fecit
S^t. Cosmo. S^t. Sebastian.

IV. Of certain Emblems and Attributes.

To know something of the attributes and emblems of general application, as well as those proper to each saint, is absolutely necessary; but it will also greatly assist the fancy and the memory to understand their origin and significance. For this reason I will add a few words of explanation.

The GLORY, NIMBUS, or AUREOLE—the Christian attribute of sanctity, and used generally to distinguish all holy personages—is of pagan origin. It expressed the luminous nebula (Homer, Il. xxiii. 205), supposed to emanate from, and surround, the Divine Essence, which stood, ‘a shade in midst of its own brightness.’ Images of the gods were decorated with a crown of rays, or with stars; and when the Roman emperors assumed the honours due to divinity, they appeared in public crowned with golden radii. The colossal statue of Nero wore a circle of rays, imitating the glory of the sun. This ornament became customary; and not only the first Cæsars, but the Christian emperors, adopted the same divine insignia; and it became at length so common that we find it on some medals, round the heads of the consuls of the later empire. Considered in the East as the attribute of power only, whether good or evil, we find, wherever early Art has been developed under Byzantine influences, the nimbus thus applied. Satan, in many Greek, Saxon, and French miniatures, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, wears a glory. In a psalter of the twelfth century, the Beast of the Apocalypse with seven heads has six heads surrounded by the nimbus; the seventh, wounded and drooping, is without the sign of power.

But in Western Art the associations with this attribute were not merely those of dignity, but of something divine and consecrated. It was for a long time avoided in the Christian representations as being appropriated by false gods or heathen pride; and when first adopted does not seem clear.[7] The earliest example cited is a gem of St. Martin of the early part of the sixth century, in which the glory round his head seems to represent his apotheosis: and in all instances it is evidently intended to represent divine glory and beatitude.

The glory round the head is properly the nimbus or aureole. The oblong glory surrounding the whole person, called in Latin the vesica piscis, and in Italian the mandorla (almond), from its form, is confined to figures of Christ and the Virgin, or saints who are in the act of ascending into heaven. When used to distinguish one of the three divine persons of the Trinity the glory is often cruciform or triangular. The square nimbus designates a person living at the time the work was executed. In the frescoes of Giotto at Assisi, the allegorical personages are in some instances distinguished by the hexagonal nimbus. In other instances it is circular. From the fifth to the twelfth century the nimbus had the form of a disc or plate over the head.[8] From the twelfth to the fifteenth century, it was a broad golden band, round, or rather behind, the head, composed of circle within circle, often adorned with precious stones, and sometimes having the name of the saint inscribed within it. From the fifteenth century it was a bright fillet over the head, and in the seventeenth century it disappeared altogether. In pictures the glory is always golden, the colour of light; in miniatures and stained glass I have seen glories of various colours, red, blue, or green.[9]

The Fish was the earliest, the most universal, of the Christian emblems, partly as the symbol of water and the rite of baptism, and also because the five Greek letters which express the word Fish form the anagram of the name of Jesus Christ. In this sense we find the fish as a general symbol of the Christian faith upon the sarcophagi of the early Christians; on the tombs of the martyrs in the catacombs; on rings, coins, lamps, and other utensils; and as an ornament in early Christian architecture. It is usually a dolphin, which among the Pagans had also a sacred significance.

The passage in the Gospel, ‘Follow me, and I will make ye fishers of men,’ is supposed to have originated the use of this symbol; and I may observe here, that the fish placed in the hands of St. Peter has probably a double or treble signification, alluding to his former occupation as a fisherman, his conversion to Christianity, and his vocation as a Christian apostle, i. e. a fisher of men, in the sense used by Christ; and in the same sense we find it given as an attribute to bishops who were famous for converting and baptising, as St. Zeno of Verona, and Gregory of Tours.

The Cross.—About the tenth century the Fish disappeared, and the Cross—symbol of our redemption, from the apostolic times—became the sole and universal emblem of the Christian faith. The cross placed in the hand of a saint is usually the Latin cross (1), the form ascribed to the cross on which our Saviour suffered. Other crosses are used as emblems or ornaments, but still having the same signification; as the Greek cross (2), in which the arms are all of the same length; the transverse cross, on which St. Andrew is supposed to have suffered, in this form (3); the Egyptian cross, sometimes placed in the hands of St. Philip the apostle, and it was also the form of the crutch of St. Anthony, and embroidered on his cope or robe—hence it is called St. Anthony’s cross (4). There is also the Maltese cross, and various ornamental crosses. The double cross on the top of a staff, instead of the crosier, is borne by the Pope only; the staff with a single cross, by the Greek bishops.

At first the cross was a sign only. When formed of gold or silver, the five wounds of Christ were signified by a ruby or carbuncle at each extremity, and one in the centre. It was not till the sixth century that the cross became a Crucifix, no longer an emblem but an image.

The Lamb, in Christian Art, is the peculiar symbol of the Redeemer as the sacrifice without blemish: in this sense it is given as an attribute to John the Baptist. The lamb is also the general emblem of innocence, meekness, modesty; in this sense it is given to St. Agnes, of whom Massillon said so beautifully, ‘peu de pudeur, où il n’y a pas de religion; peu de religion, où il n’y a pas de pudeur.’

The Pelican, tearing open her breast to feed her young with her own blood, was an early symbol of our redemption through Christ.

One or both of these emblems are frequently found in ancient crosses and crucifixes; the lamb at the foot, the pelican at the top, of the cross.

The Dragon is the emblem of sin in general, and of the sin of idolatry in particular; and the dragon slain or vanquished by the power of the cross, is the perpetually recurring myth, which, varied in a thousand ways, we find running through all the old Christian legends: not subject to misapprehension in the earliest times; but, as the cloud of ignorance darkened and deepened, the symbol was translated into a fact. It has been suggested that the dragon, which is to us a phantasm and an allegory, which in the middle ages was the visible shape of the demon adversary of all truth and goodness, might have been, as regards form, originally a fact: for wherever we have dragon legends, whether the scene be laid in Asia, Africa, or Europe, the imputed circumstances and the form are little varied. The dragons introduced into early painting and sculpture so invariably represent a gigantic winged crocodile, that it is presumed there must have been some common origin for the type chosen as if by common consent; and that this common type may have been some fossil remains of the Saurian species, or even some far-off dim tradition of one of these tremendous reptiles surviving in Heaven knows what vast desolate morass or inland lake, and spreading horror and devastation along its shores. At Aix, a huge fossilised head of one of the Sauri was for a long time preserved as the head of the identical dragon subdued by St. Martha; and St. Jerome relates that he had himself beheld at Tyre the bones of the sea monster to which Andromeda had been exposed—probably some fossil remains which in the popular imagination were thus accounted for. Professor Owen told me that the head of a dragon in one of the legendary pictures he had seen in Italy closely resembled in form that of the Deinotherium Giganteum. These observations have reference only to the type adopted when the old Scripture allegory took form and shape. The dragon of Holy Writ is the same as the serpent, i. e., personified sin, the spiritual enemy of mankind.

The scriptural phrase of the ‘jaws of hell’ is literally rendered in the ancient works of Art by the huge jaws of a dragon, wide open and emitting flames, into which the souls of sinners are tumbled headlong. In pictures, sin is also typified by a serpent or snake; in this form it is placed under the feet of the Madonna, sometimes with an apple in its mouth; sometimes, but only in late pictures of the seventeenth century, winding its green scaly length round and round a globe, significant of the subjugation of the whole earth to the power of sin till delivered by the Redeemer. On this subject I shall have much more to say when treating of the pictures of the Fall of Man, and the subjects taken from the Apocalypse: for the present we need only bear in mind the various significations of the popular Dragon myth, which may shadow forth the conquest over sin, as in the legends of St. Michael and St. Margaret; or over paganism, as in the legends of St. Sylvester and St. George; or sometimes a destroying flood, as in the legend of St. Martha, where the inundation of the Rhone is figured by a dragon emerging from the waters and spreading around death and pestilence,—like the Python of the Grecian myth.

The Lion, as an ancient Christian symbol, is of frequent recurrence, more particularly in architectural decoration. Antiquaries are not agreed as to the exact meaning attached to the mystical lions placed in the porches of so many old Lombard churches; sometimes with an animal, sometimes with a man, in their paws. But we find that the lion was an ancient symbol of the Redeemer, ‘the Lion of the tribe of Judah:’ also of the resurrection of the Redeemer; because, according to an oriental fable, the lion’s cub was born dead, and in three days its sire licked it into life. In this sense it occurs in the windows of the cathedral at Bourges. In either sense it may probably have been adopted as a frequent ornament in the church utensils, and in ecclesiastical decoration, supporting the pillars in front, or the carved thrones, &c.

The lion also typifies solitude—the wilderness; and, in this sense, is placed near St. Jerome and other saints who did penance, or lived as hermits in the desert; as in the legends of St. Paul the hermit, St. Mary of Egypt, St. Onofrio. Further, the lion as an attribute denoted death in the amphitheatre, and with this signification is placed near certain martyrs, as St. Ignatius and St. Euphemia. The lion, as the type of fortitude and resolution, was placed at the feet of those martyrs who had suffered with singular courage, as St. Adrian and St. Natalia.[10]

When other wild beasts, as wolves and bears, are placed at the feet of a saint attired as abbot or bishop, it signifies that he cleared waste land, out down forests, and substituted Christian culture and civilisation for paganism and the lawless hunter’s life: such is the significance in pictures of St. Magnus, St. Florentius and St. Germain of Auxerre.

The Hart or Hind was also an emblem of double signification. It was a type of solitude and of purity of life, and was also a type of piety and religious aspiration, adopted from the forty-second Psalm, ‘Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul for thee, O God!’

When the original meaning of the lion, the hart, and other emblems, was no longer present to the popular mind, legends were invented to account for them; and that which had been a symbol, became an incident, or an historical attribute,—as in the stories of the lion healed by St. Jerome, or digging the grave of St. Paul; the miraculous stag which appeared to St. Eustace and St. Hubert; the wounded doe in the legend of St. Giles; and the hind which spoke to St. Julian.

The Peacock, the bird of Juno, was an ancient pagan symbol, signifying the apotheosis of an empress, as we find from many of the old Roman coins and medals. The early Christians, accustomed to this interpretation, adopted it as a general emblem of the mortal exchanged for the immortal existence; and, with this signification, we find the peacock with outspread train on the walls and ceilings of catacombs, the tombs of the martyrs, and many of the sarcophagi, down to the fourth and fifth centuries. It is only in modern times that the peacock has become the emblem of worldly pride.

The Crown, as introduced in Christian Art, is either an emblem or an attribute. It has been the emblem from all antiquity of victory, and of recompense due to superior power or virtue. In this sense the word and the image are used in Scripture in many passages: for example, ‘Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory.’ And in this sense, as the recompense of those who had fought the good fight to the end, and conquered, the crown became the especial symbol of the glory of martyrdom. In very ancient pictures, a hand is seen coming out of heaven holding a wreath or circlet; afterwards it is an angel who descends with a crown, which is sometimes a coronet of gold and jewels, sometimes a wreath of palm or myrtle. In general only the female martyrs wear the symbolical crown of glory; martyrs of the other sex hold the crown in their hands, or it is borne by an angel. Hence we may presume that the crown, which among the Jews was the especial ornament of a bride, signified the bride or spouse of Christ—one dedicated to virginity for his sake; and in this sense, down to the present time, the crown is placed on the head of a nun at the moment of consecration. Therefore in the old pictures of female martyrs we may interpret the crown in this double sense, as signifying at once the bride and the martyr.

But it is necessary also to distinguish between the symbol and the attribute: thus, where St. Cecilia and St. Barbara wear the crown, it is the symbol of their glorious martyrdom; when St. Catherine and St. Ursula wear the crown, it is at once as the symbol of martyrdom and the attribute of their royal rank as princesses.

The crown is also the symbol of sovereignty. When it is placed on the head of the Virgin, it is as Queen of Heaven, and also as the ‘Spouse’ of Scripture allegory.

But the crown is also an attribute, and frequently, when worn by a saint or placed at his feet, signifies that he was royal or of princely birth: as in the pictures of Louis of France, St. William, St. Elizabeth, St. Helena, and many others.

The crowns in the Italian pictures are generally a wreath, or a simple circle of gold and jewels, or a coronet radiated with a few points. But in the old German pictures the crown is often of most magnificent workmanship, blazing with jewels.

I have seen a real silver crown placed on the figures of certain popular saints, but as a votive tribute, not an emblem.

The Sword is also either a symbol or an attribute. As a symbol it signifies generally martyrdom by any violent death, and, in this sense, is given to many saints who did not die by the sword. As an attribute it signifies the particular death suffered, and that the martyr in whose hand or at whose feet it is placed was beheaded: in this sense it is given to St. Paul, St. Catherine, and many others. It is given also to the warrior-martyrs, as the attribute of their military profession. Other symbols of martyrdom are the Axe, the Lance, and the Club.

Arrows, which are attributes, St. Ursula, St. Christina, and St. Sebastian.

The Poniard, given to St. Lucia.

The Cauldron, given to St. John the Evangelist and St. Cecilia.

The Pincers and Shears, St. Apollonia and St. Agatha.

The Wheels, St. Catherine.

Fire and Flames are sometimes an emblem of martyrdom and punishment, and sometimes of religious fervour.

A Bell was supposed to have power to exorcise demons, and for this reason is given to the haunted St. Anthony.

The Shell signifies pilgrimage.

The Skull, penance.

The Anvil, as an attribute of martyrdom, belongs to St. Adrian only.

The Palm, the ancient classical symbol of victory and triumph, was early assumed by the Christians as the universal symbol of martyrdom, and for this adaptation of a pagan ornament they found warrant in Scripture: Rev. vii. 9, ‘And after this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude stood before the throne clothed with white robes and with palms in their hands.‘... ‘And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation.’ Hence in pictures of martyrdoms an angel descends with the palm; hence it is figured on the tombs of early martyrs, and placed in the hands of those who suffered in the cause of truth, as expressing their final victory over the powers of sin and death.

The sensual think with reverence of the palm

Which the chaste votary wields.

The palm varies in form from a small leaf to the size of a palm branch, almost a tree. It is very small in the early Italian pictures, very large in the Spanish pictures. In the Siena pictures it has a bunch of dates depending from it. It is only in late pictures that the palm, with a total disregard to the sacredness of its original signification, is placed on the ground, or under the feet of the saint.

The Standard, or banner, is also the symbol of victory, the spiritual victory over sin, death, and idolatry. It is borne by our Saviour after his resurrection, and is placed in the hands of St. George, St. Maurice, and other military saints; in the hands of some victorious martyrs, as St. Julian, St. Ansano, and of those who preached the Gospel among infidels; also in the hands of St. Ursula and St. Reparata, the only female saints, I believe, who bear this attribute.

The Olive, as the well-known emblem of peace and reconciliation, is figured on the tombs of the early martyrs; sometimes with, sometimes without, the dove. The olive is borne as the attribute of peace by the angel Gabriel, by St. Agnes, and by St. Pantaleon; sometimes also by the angels in a Nativity, who announce ‘peace on earth.’

The Dove in Christian Art is the emblem of the Holy Ghost; and, besides its introduction into various subjects from the New Testament, as the Annunciation, the Baptism, the Pentecost, it is placed near certain saints who are supposed to have been particularly inspired, as St. Gregory, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Hilarius, and others.

The dove is also a symbol of simplicity and purity of heart, and as such it is introduced into pictures of female saints, and especially of the Madonna and Child.

It is also the emblem of the soul; in this sense it is seen issuing from the lips of dying martyrs, and is found in pictures of St. Eulalia of Merida, and St. Scholastica the sister of St. Benedict.

The Lily is another symbol of purity, of very general application. We find it in pictures of the Virgin, and particularly in pictures of the Annunciation. It is placed significantly in the hand of St. Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, his staff, according to the legend, having put forth lilies; it is given, as an emblem merely, to St. Francis, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Dominick, and St. Catherine of Siena, to express the particular purity of their lives.

The Unicorn is another ancient symbol of purity, in allusion to the fable that it could never be captured except by a virgin stainless in mind and life; it has become in consequence the emblem peculiarly of female chastity, but in Christian Art is appropriate only to the Virgin Mary and St. Justina.

The Flaming Heart expresses fervent piety and love: in early pictures it is given to St. Augustine, merely in allusion to a famous passage in his ‘Confessions;’ but in the later schools of Art it has become a general and rather vulgar emblem of spiritual love: in this sense it is given to St. Theresa; St. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, a Florentine nun; and some of the Jesuit saints.

The Book in the hands of the Evangelists and the Apostles is an attribute, and represents the Gospel. In the hand of St. Stephen it is the Old Testament; in the hand of any other saint it may be the Gospel, but it may also be an emblem only, signifying that the saint was famous for his learning or his writings; it has this sense in pictures of St. Catherine, the Doctors of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventura.

A Church placed in the hands of a saint signifies that he was the founder of some particular church: in this sense St. Henry bears the cathedral of Bamberg; or, that he was the protector and first bishop of the church, as St. Petronius bears the cathedral of Bologna. I must except the single instance of St. Jerome; the church in his hands signifies no particular edifice, but, in a general sense, the Catholic Church, of which he was the great support and one of the primitive fathers; to render the symbol more expressive, rays of light are seen proceeding from the portal.

The Scourge in the hand of a saint, or at his feet, signifies the penances he inflicted upon himself; but in the hand of St. Ambrose, it signifies the penance he inflicted upon others.

The Chalice, or Sacramental Cup, with the Host, signifies Faith; it is given to St. Barbara. The Cup, with the Serpent, is the attribute of St. John.

The Ship.—The Ark of Noah, floating safe amid the Deluge, in which all things else were overwhelmed, was an obvious symbol of the Church of Christ. Subsequently the Ark became a ship. St. Ambrose likens the Church of God to a ship, and the Cross to the mast set in the midst of it. ‘Arbor quædam in nari est crux in ecclesia.’ The Bark of St. Peter tossed in the storm, and by the Redeemer guided safe to land, was also considered as symbolical. These mingled associations combined to give to the emblem of the ship a sacred significance. Every one who has been at Rome will remember the famous mosaic of the ship tossed by the storms, and assailed by demons, called The Navicella, which was executed by Giotto for the old Basilica of St. Peter’s, and is now under the Portico, opposite to the principal door. I believe that in the pictures of St. Nicholas and St. Ursula the ship had originally a sacred and symbolical significance, and that the legends were afterwards invented or modified to explain the emblem, as in so many other instances.

The Anchor is the Christian symbol of immovable firmness, hope, and patience; and in this sense we find it very frequently in the catacombs, and on the ancient Christian gems. It was given to several of the early saints as a symbol. Subsequently a legend was invented to account for the symbol, turning it into an attribute, as was the case with the lion and the stag. For example: to St. Clement the anchor was first given as the symbol of his constancy in Christian hope, and thence we find, subsequently invented, the story of his being thrown into the sea with the anchor round his neck. On the vane of the Church of St. Clement in the Strand, the anchor, the parish device, was anciently placed; and as in the English fancy no anchor can be well separated from a ship, they have lately placed a ship on the other side,—the original signification of the anchor, as applied to St. Clement the martyr, being unknown or forgotten.

The Lamp, Lantern, or Taper, is the old emblem of piety: ‘Let your light so shine before men:’—and it also signifies wisdom. In the first sense we find this attribute in the hand of St. Gudula, St. Geneviève of Paris, and St. Bridget; while the lamp in the hand of St. Lucia signifies celestial light or wisdom.

Flowers and Fruits, often so beautifully introduced into ecclesiastical works of Art, may be merely ornamental; Crivelli, and some of the Venetian and Lombard painters, were fond of rich festoons of fruit, and backgrounds of foliage and roses. But in some instances they have a definite significance. Roses are symbolical in pictures of the Madonna, who is the ‘Rose of Sharon.’[11] The wreath of roses on the brow of St. Cecilia, the roses and fruits borne by St. Dorothea, are explained by the legends.

The apple was the received emblem of the Fall of Man and original sin. Placed in pictures of the Madonna and Child, either in the hand of the Infant Christ, or presented by an angel, it signified Redemption from the consequences of the Fall. The pomegranate, bursting open, and the seeds visible, was an emblem of the future—of hope in immortality. When an apple, a pear, or a pomegranate is placed in the hand of St. Catherine as the mystical Sposa of Christ, which continually occurs, particularly in the German pictures, the allusion is to be taken in the scriptural sense: ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.’

V. Of the Significance of Colours.

In very early Art we find colours used in a symbolical or mystic sense, and, until the ancient principles and traditions were wholly worn out of memory or set aside by the later painters, certain colours were appropriate to certain subjects and personages, and could not arbitrarily be applied or misapplied. In the old specimens of stained glass we find these significations scrupulously attended to. Thus:—

White, represented by the diamond or silver, was the emblem of light, religious purity, innocence, virginity, faith, joy, and life. Our Saviour wears white after his resurrection. In the judge it indicated integrity; in the rich man humility; in the woman chastity. It was the colour consecrated to the Virgin, who, however, never wears white except in pictures of the Assumption.

Red, the ruby, signified fire, divine love, the Holy Spirit, heat, or the creative power, and royalty. White and red roses expressed love and innocence, or love and wisdom, as in the garland with which the angel crowns St. Cecilia. In a bad sense, red signified blood, war, hatred, and punishment. Red and black combined were the colours of purgatory and the Devil.

Blue, or the sapphire, expressed heaven, the firmament, truth, constancy, fidelity. Christ and the Virgin wear the red tunic and the blue mantle, as signifying heavenly love and heavenly truth.[12] The same colours were given to St. John the evangelist, with this difference,—that he wore the blue tunic and the red mantle; in later pictures the colours are sometimes red and green.

Yellow, or gold, was the symbol of the sun; of the goodness of God; initiation, or marriage; faith, or fruitfulness. St. Joseph, the husband of the Virgin, wears yellow. In pictures of the apostles, St. Peter wears a yellow mantle over a blue tunic. In a bad sense, yellow signifies inconstancy, jealousy, deceit; in this sense it is given to the traitor Judas, who is generally habited in dirty yellow.

Green, the emerald, is the colour of spring; of hope, particularly hope in immortality; and of victory, as the colour of the palm and the laurel.

Violet, the amethyst, signified love and truth: or, passion and suffering. Hence it is the colour often worn by the martyrs. In some instances our Saviour, after his resurrection, is habited in a violet instead of a blue mantle. The Virgin also wears violet after the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene, who as patron saint wears the red robe, as penitent wears violet and blue, the colours of sorrow and of constancy. In the devotional representation of her by Timoteo della Vite,[13] she wears red and green, the colours of love and hope.

Grey, the colour of ashes, signified mourning, humility, and innocence accused; hence adopted as the dress of the Franciscans (the Grey Friars); but it has since been changed for a dark rusty brown.

Black expressed the earth, darkness, mourning, wickedness, negation, death; and was appropriate to the Prince of Darkness. In some old illuminated MSS., Jesus, in the Temptation, wears a black robe. White and black together signified purity of life, and mourning or humiliation; hence adopted by the Dominicans and the Carmelites.

The mystical application of attributes and colours was more particularly attended to in that class of subjects I have distinguished as devotional. In the sacred historical pictures we find that the attributes are usually omitted as superfluous, and characteristic propriety of colour often sacrificed to the general effect.

These introductory observations and explanations will be found illustrated in a variety of forms as we proceed; and readers will be led to make comparisons and discover analogies and exceptions for themselves. I must stop here;—yet one word more.

All the productions of Art, from the time it has been directed and developed by Christian influences, may be regarded under three different aspects. 1. The purely religious aspect, which belongs to one mode of faith; 2. The poetical aspect, which belongs to all; 3. The artistic, which is the individual point of view, and has reference only to the action of the intellect on the means and material employed. There is pleasure, intense pleasure, merely in the consideration of Art as Art; in the faculties of comparison and nice discrimination, brought to bear on objects of beauty; in the exercise of a cultivated and refined taste on the productions of mind in any form whatever. But a three-fold, or rather a thousand-fold, pleasure is theirs who to a sense of the poetical unite a sympathy with the spiritual in Art, and who combine with delicacy of perception, and technical knowledge, more elevated sources of pleasure, more variety of association, habits of more excursive thought. Let none imagine, however, that, in placing before the uninitiated these unpretending volumes, I assume any such superiority as is here implied. Like a child that has sprung on a little way before its playmates, and caught a glimpse through an opening portal of some varied Eden within, all gay with flowers, and musical with birds, and haunted by divine shapes which beckon onward; and, after one rapturous survey, runs back and catches its companions by the hand and hurries them forwards to share the new-found pleasure, the yet unexplored region of delight; even so it is with me:—I am on the outside, not the inside, of the door I open.

2 After Gaudenzio Ferrari, at Saronno

PART I.

Ye too must fly before a chasing hand,

Angels and saints in every hamlet mourned!

Ah! if the old idolatry be spurn’d,

Let not your radiant shapes desert the land!

Her adoration was not your demand,—

The fond heart proffer’d it,—the servile heart,

And therefore are ye summon’d to depart;

Michael, and thou St. George, whose flaming brand

The Dragon quell’d; and valiant Margaret,

Whose rival sword a like opponent slew;

And rapt Cecilia, seraph-haunted queen

Of harmony; and weeping Magdalene,

Who in the penitential desert met

Gales sweet as those that over Eden blew!

Wordsworth.

‘I can just remember,’ says a theologian of the last century, ‘when the women first taught me to say my prayers, I used to have an idea of a venerable old man, of a composed, benign countenance, with his own hair, clad in a morning gown of a grave-coloured flowered damask, sitting in an elbow-chair.’ And he proceeds to say that, in looking back to these beginnings, he is in no way disturbed at the grossness of his infant theology. The image thus shaped by the imagination of the child was, in truth, merely one example of the various forms and conceptions fitted to divers states and seasons, and orders and degrees, of the religious mind, whether infant or adult, which represent the several approximations such minds at such seasons can respectively make to the completeness of faith. These imperfect ideas should be held to be reconciled and comprehended in that completeness, not rejected by it; and the nearest approximation which the greatest of human minds can accomplish is surely to be regarded as much nearer to the imperfection of an infantine notion than to the fulness of truth. The gown of flowered damask and the elbow-chair may disappear; the anthropomorphism of childhood may give place to the divine incarnation of the Second Person in after-years; and we may come to conceive of the Deity as Milton did when his epithets were most abstract:—

‘So spake the Sovran Presence.’

But after all, these are but different grades of imperfection in the forms of doctrinal faith; and if there be a devouter love on the part of the child for what is pictured in his imagination as a venerable old man, than in the philosophic poet for the ‘Sovran Presence,’ the child’s faith has more of the efficacy of religious truth in it than the poet’s and philosopher’s. (Vide ‘Notes on Life,’ by Henry Taylor, p. 136.)

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Of Angels and Archangels.

Of Angels and Archangels.

I. The Angels.

There is something so very attractive and poetical, as well as soothing to our helpless finite nature, in all the superstitions connected with the popular notion of Angels, that we cannot wonder at their prevalence in the early ages of the world. Those nations who acknowledged one Almighty Creator, and repudiated with horror the idea of a plurality of Gods, were the most willing to accept, the most enthusiastic in accepting, these objects of an intermediate homage; and gladly placed between their humanity and the awful supremacy of an unseen God, the ministering spirits who were the agents of his will, the witnesses of his glory, the partakers of his bliss, and who in their preternatural attributes of love and knowledge filled up that vast space in the created universe which intervened between mortal man and the infinite, omnipotent Lord of All.

The belief in these superior beings, dating from immemorial antiquity, interwoven as it should seem with our very nature, and authorised by a variety of passages in Scripture, has descended to our time. Although the bodily forms assigned to them are allowed to be impossible, and merely allegorical, although their supposed functions as rulers of the stars and elements have long been set aside by a knowledge of the natural laws, still the coexistence of many orders of beings superior in nature to ourselves, benignly interested in our welfare, and contending for us against the powers of evil, remains an article of faith. Perhaps the belief itself, and the feeling it excites in the tender and contemplative mind, were never more beautifully expressed than by our own Spenser:—

And is there care in heaven? And is there love

In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,

That may compassion of their evils move?

There is!—else much more wretched were the case

Of men than beasts! But O th’ exceeding grace

Of highest God that loves his creatures so,

And all his works with mercy doth embrace,

That blessed angels he sends to and fro

To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe

How oft do they their silver bowers leave,

And come to succour us that succour want?

How oft do they with golden pinions cleave

The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant,

Against foul fiends, to aid us militant?

They for its fight, they watch, and duly ward,

And their bright squadrons round about us plant,

And all for love, and nothing for reward!

Oh why should heavenly God to men have such regard!

It is this feeling, expressed or unexpressed, lurking at the very core of all hearts, which renders the usual representations of angels, spite of all incongruities of form, so pleasing to the fancy: we overlook the anatomical solecisms, and become mindful only of that emblematical significance which through its humanity connects it with us, and through its supernatural appendages connects us with heaven.

But it is necessary to give a brief summary of the scriptural and theological authorities, relative to the nature and functions of angels, before we can judge of the manner in which these ideas have been attended to and carried out in the artistic similitudes. Thus angels are represented in the Old Testament—

1. As beings of a higher nature than men, and gifted with superior intelligence and righteousness.[14]

2. As a host of attendants surrounding the throne of God, and as a kind of celestial court or council.[15]

3. As messengers of his will conveyed from heaven to earth: or as sent to guide, to correct, to instruct, to reprove, to console.

4. As protecting the pious.

5. As punishing by command of the Most High the wicked and disobedient.[16]

6. As having the form of men; as eating and drinking.

7. As wielding a sword.

8. As having power to slay.[17]

I do not recollect any instance in which angels are represented in Scripture as instigated by human passions; they are merely the agents of the mercy or the wrath of the Almighty.

After the period of the Captivity, the Jewish ideas concerning angels were considerably extended and modified by an admixture of the Chaldaic belief, and of the doctrines taught by Zoroaster.[18] It is then that we first hear of good and bad angels, and of a fallen angel or impersonation of evil, busy in working mischief on earth and counteracting good; also of archangels, who are alluded to by name; and of guardian angels assigned to nations and individuals; and these foreign ideas concerning the spiritual world, accepted and promulgated by the Jewish doctors, pervade the whole of the New Testament, in which angels are far more familiar to us as agents, more frequently alluded to, and more distinctly brought before us, than in the Old Testament. For example: they are represented—

1. As countless.

2. As superior to all human wants and weaknesses.

3. As the deputed messengers of God.

4. They rejoice over the repentant sinner. They take deep interest in the mission of Christ.

5. They are present with those who pray; they bear the souls of the just to heaven.

6. They minister to Christ on earth, and will be present at his second coming.[19]

In the Gospel of St. John, which is usually regarded as the fullest and most correct exposition of the doctrines of Christ, angels are only three times mentioned, and in none of these instances does the word angel fall from the lips of Christ. On the other hand, the writings of St. Paul, who was deeply versed in all the learning and philosophy of the Jews, abound in allusions to angels, and, according to the usual interpretation of certain passages, he shows them divided into several classes.[20] St. Luke, who was the friend and disciple of St. Paul, some say his convert, is more direct and explicit on the subject of angels than any of the other Evangelists, and his allusions to them much more frequent.

The worship of angels, which the Jews brought from Chaldea, was early introduced into the Christian Church. In the fourth century the council of Laodicea published a decree against places of worship dedicated to angels under names which the Church did not recognise. But neither warning nor council seems to have had power to modify the popular creed, countenanced as it was by high authority. All the Fathers are unanimous as to the existence of angels good and evil. They hold that it is evermore the allotted task of good angels to defend us against evil angels, and to carry on a daily and hourly combat against our spiritual foes: they teach that the good angels are worthy of all reverence as the ministers of God and as the protectors of the human race; that their intercession is to be invoked, and their perpetual, invisible presence to be regarded as an incitement to good and a preventive to evil.

This, however, was not enough. Taking for their foundation a few Scripture texts, and in particular the classification of St. Paul, the imaginative theologians of the middle ages ran into all kinds of extravagant subtleties regarding the being, the nature, and the functions of the different orders of angels. Except as far as they have been taken as authorities in Art, I shall set aside these fanciful disquisitions, of which a mere abstract would fill volumes. For our present purpose it is sufficient to bear in mind that the great theologians divide the angelic host into three hierarchies, and these again into nine choirs, three in each hierarchy: according to Dionysius the Areopagite, in the following order: 1. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. 2. Dominations, Virtues, Powers. 3. Princedoms, Archangels, Angels. The order of these denominations is not the same in all authorities: according to the Greek formula, St. Bernard, and the Legenda Aurea, the Cherubim precede the Seraphim, and in the hymn of St. Ambrose they have also the precedence—To Thee, Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, &c.; but the authority of St. Dionysius seems to be admitted as paramount, for according to the legend he was the convert and intimate friend of St. Paul, and St. Paul, who had been transported to the seventh heaven, had made him acquainted with all he had there beheld.

Desire

In Dionysius so intensely wrought

That he, as I have done, ranged them, and named

Their orders, marshall’d in his thought;

... For he had learn’d

Both this and much beside of these our orbs

From an eye-witness to Heaven’s mysteries.

Dante, Par. 28.

The first three choirs receive their glory immediately from God, and transmit it to the second; the second illuminate the third; the third are placed in relation to the created universe and man. The first Hierarchy are as councillors; the second as governors; the third as ministers. The Seraphim are absorbed in perpetual love and adoration immediately round the throne of God. The Cherubim know and worship. The Thrones sustain the seat of the Most High. The Dominations, Virtues, Powers, are the Regents of stars and elements. The three last orders, Princedoms, Archangels, and Angels, are the protectors of the great Monarchies on earth, and the executors of the will of God throughout the universe.

The term angels is properly applied to all these celestial beings; but it belongs especially to the two last orders, who are brought into immediate communication with the human race. The word angel, Greek in its origin, signifies a messenger, or more literally a bringer of tidings.

In this sense the Greeks entitle Christ ‘The great Angel of the will of God;’ and I have seen Greek representations of Christ with wings to his shoulders. John the Baptist is also an angel in this sense; likewise the Evangelists; all of whom, as I shall show hereafter, bear, as celestial messengers, the angel-wings.

4 Greek Seraph; wings of gold and crimson (Ninth century)

In ancient pictures and illuminations which exhibit the glorification of the Trinity, Christ, or the Virgin, the hierarchies of angels are represented in circles around them, orb within orb. This is called a glory of angels. In pictures it is seldom complete: instead of nine circles, the painters content themselves with one or two circles only. The innermost circles, the Seraphim and the Cherubim, are in general represented as heads merely, with two or four or six wings, and of a bright-red or blue colour; sometimes with variegated wings, green, yellow, violet, &c. This emblem—intended to shadow forth to human comprehension a pure spirit glowing with love and intelligence, in which all that is bodily is put away, and only the head, the seat of soul, and wings, the attribute of spirit and swiftness, retained—is of Greek origin. When first adopted I do not know, but I have met with it in Greek MSS. of the ninth century. Down to the eleventh century the faces were human, but not childish; the infant head was afterwards adopted to express innocence in addition to love and intelligence.

5 Cherubim, Italian (Fourteenth century)

6 Cherub Heads

Such was the expressive and poetical symbol which degenerated in the later periods of Art into those little fat baby heads, with curly hair and small wings under the chin, which the more they resemble nature in colour, feature, and detail, the more absurd they become, the original meaning being wholly lost or perverted.

In painting, where a glory of angels is placed round the Divine Being or the glorified Virgin, those forming the innermost circles are or ought to be of a glowing red, the colour of fire, that is, of love; the next circle is painted blue, the colour of the firmament, or light, that is, of knowledge. Now as the word seraph is derived from a Hebrew root signifying love, and the word cherub from a Hebrew root signifying to know, should not this distinction fix the proper place and name of the first two orders? It is admitted that the spirits which love are nearer to God than those which know, since we cannot know that which we do not first love: that Love and Knowledge, ‘the two halves of a divided world,’ constitute in their union the perfection of the angelic nature; but the Seraphim, according to the derivation of their name, should love most; their whole being is fused, as it were, in a glow of adoration; therefore they should take the precedence, and their proper colour is red. The Cherubim, ‘the lords of those that know,’ come next, and are to be painted blue.

Thus it should seem that, in considering the religious pictures of the early ages of Art, we have to get rid of certain associations as to colour and form, derived from the phraseology of later poets and the representations of later painters. ‘Blue-eyed Seraphim,’ and the ‘blue depth of Seraph’s eyes,’ are not to be thought of any more than smiling Cherubim.’ The Seraphim, where distinguished by colour, are red; the Cherubim blue: the proper character, where character is attended to, is, in the Seraph, adoration; in the Cherub, contemplation. So Milton—

With thee bring

Him who soars on golden wing,

The Cherub, Contemplation.

I remember a little Triptyca, a genuine work of Fiesole, in which one of the lateral compartments represents his favourite subject, the souls of the blessed received into Paradise. They are moving from the lower part of the picture towards the top, along an ascent paved with flowers, all in white garments and crowned with roses. At one side, low down, stands a blue Cherub robed in drapery spangled with golden stars, who seems to encourage the blessed group. Above are the gates of heaven. Christ welcomes to his kingdom the beatified spirits, and on each side stands a Seraph, all of a glowing red, in spangled drapery. The figures are not here merely heads and wings, but full length, having all that soft peculiar grace which belongs to the painter.[21]

In a Coronation of the Virgin,[22] a glory of Seraphim over-arches the principal group. Here the angelic beings are wholly of a bright red colour: they are human to the waist, with hands clasped in devotion: the bodies and arms covered with plumage, but the forms terminating in wings; all uniformly red. In the same collection is a small Greek picture of Christ receiving the soul of the Virgin; over his head hovers a large, fiery-red, six-winged Seraph; and on each side a Seraph with hair and face and limbs of glowing red, and with white draperies. Vasari mentions an Adoration of the Magi by Liberale of Verona, in which a group of angels, all of a red colour, stand as a celestial guard round the Virgin and her divine Infant.[23]

7 Cherubim (Liberale di Verona)

The distinction of hue in the red and blue angels we find wholly omitted towards the end of the fifteenth century. Cherubim with blue, red, green, and variegated wings we find in the pictures of Perugino and other masters in the beginning of the sixteenth century, also in early pictures of Raphael. Liberale di Verona has given us, in a Madonna picture, Cherub heads without wings, and of a blue colour, emerging from golden clouds. And in Raphael’s Madonna di San Sisto the whole background is formed of Cherubim and Seraphim of a uniform delicate bluish tinge, as if composed of air, and melting away into an abyss of golden glory, the principal figures standing relieved against this flood of living love and light—beautiful! So are the Cherubim with many-coloured wings which float in the firmament in Perugino’s Coronation of the Virgin; but none of these can be regarded as so theologically correct as the fiery-red and bright-blue Seraphim and Cherubim, of which are formed the hierarchies and glories which figure in the early pictures, the stained glass, the painted sculpture, and the illuminated MSS. from the tenth to the sixteenth century.

The next five choirs of angels, the Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, though classed and described with great exactitude by the theologians, have not been very accurately discriminated in Art. In some examples the Thrones have green wings, a fiery aureole, and bear a throne in their hands. The Dominations, Virtues, and Powers sometimes bear a globe and a long sceptre surmounted by a cross. The Principalities, according to the Greek formula, should bear a branch of lily. The Archangels are figured as warriors, and carry a sword with the point upwards. The angels are robed as deacons, and carry a wand. In one of the ancient frescoes in the Cathedral at Orvieto, there is a complete hierarchy of angels, so arranged as to symbolise the Trinity, each of the nine choirs being composed of three angels, but the Seraphim only are distinguished by their red colour and priority of place. In the south porch of the Cathedral of Chartres, each of the nine orders is represented by two angels: in other instances, one angel only represents the order to which he belongs, and nine angels represent the whole hierarchy.[24] Where, however, we meet with groups or rows of angels, as in the Greek mosaics and the earliest frescoes all alike, all with the tiara, the long sceptre-like wands, and the orb of sovereignty, I believe these to represent the Powers and Princedoms of Heaven. The Archangels alone, as we shall see presently, have distinct individual names and attributes assigned to them.

8 Part of a Glory of Angels surrounding the figure of Christ in a picture by Ambrogio Borgognone

The angels, generally, have the human form; are winged; and are endowed with immutable happiness and perpetual youth, because they are ever in the presence of Him with whom there is no change and no time. They are direct emanations of the beauty of the Eternal mind, therefore beautiful; created, therefore not eternal, but created perfect, and immortal in their perfection: they are always supposed to be masculine; perhaps for the reason so beautifully assigned by Madame de Staël, ‘because the union of power with purity (la force avec la pureté) constitutes all that we mortals can imagine of perfection.’ There is no such thing as an old angel, and therefore there ought to be no such thing as an infant angel. The introduction of infant angels seems to have arisen from the custom of representing the regenerate souls of men as new-born infants, and perhaps also from the words of our Saviour, when speaking of children: ‘I say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.’ Such representations, when religiously and poetically treated as spirits of love, intelligence, and innocence, are of exquisite beauty, and have a significance which charms and elevates the fancy; but from this, the true and religious conception, the Italian putti and puttini, and the rosy chubby babies of the Flemish school, are equally remote.