Legends of the Madonna, as represented in the fine artsForming the third series of Sacred and legendary art . as it has been well styled, was held together by such a prin-ciple. The founders of the Caracci school, and their immediatefollowers, felt the influences of the time, and worked them were devout believers in their Church, and most sincereworshippers of the Madonna. Guido, in particular, was so distin-guished by his passionate enthusiasm for her, that he was supposedto have been favoured by a particular vision, which enabled himmore worthily to represent her divine beauty. It i
Legends of the Madonna, as represented in the fine artsForming the third series of Sacred and legendary art . as it has been well styled, was held together by such a prin-ciple. The founders of the Caracci school, and their immediatefollowers, felt the influences of the time, and worked them were devout believers in their Church, and most sincereworshippers of the Madonna. Guido, in particular, was so distin-guished by his passionate enthusiasm for her, that he was supposedto have been favoured by a particular vision, which enabled himmore worthily to represent her divine beauty. It is curious that, hand inhand with this development of taste and feeling in the appre-ciation of natural sentiment andbeauty, and this tendency torealism, we find the associationsof a peculiar and specific sanc-tity remaining with the old By-zantine type. This arose fromthe fact, always to be borne inmind, that the most ancientartistic figure of the Madonnawas a purely theological symbol:apparently the moral type wastoo nearly allied to the humanand the real to satisfy is the ugly, dark-coloured,. 150 ancient Greek Madonnas, suchas this, which had all along the credit of being miraculous; and* to this day, says Kugler, * the Neapolitan lemonade-seller willallow no other than a formal Greek Madonna, with olive-greencomplexion and veiled head, to be set up in his booth. It is thesame in Russia. Such pictures, in which there is no attempt atrepresentation, real or ideal, and which merely have a sort ofimaginary sanctity and power, are not so much idols as they aremere Fetishes. The most lovely Madonna by Raphael or Titianwould not have the same effect. Guido, who himself painted INTRODUCTION. XXXVU lovely Virgins, went every Saturday to pray before the little blackMadonna della Guardia, and, as we are assured, held this oldEastern relic in devout veneration. In the pictures of the Madonna, produced by the most eminentpainters of the seventeenth century, is embodied the theo
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