The Madonna in art . s andSt. Anthony, and surrounded by sevenallegorical figures to represent the cardi-nal virtues. Below are six saints, speciallyhonored in the Franciscan Order. Thepicture is called the finest production of 82 THE MADONNA IN ART. the school in the first quarter of the six-teenth century. In the Venetian school, Titian andTintoretto both painted the subject ofthe Madonna in glory, but the picturesare not notable compared with manyothers from their hands. From the North of Italy we naturallyturn next to the South, to inquire whatRaphael was doing at the same period inRome. O
The Madonna in art . s andSt. Anthony, and surrounded by sevenallegorical figures to represent the cardi-nal virtues. Below are six saints, speciallyhonored in the Franciscan Order. Thepicture is called the finest production of 82 THE MADONNA IN ART. the school in the first quarter of the six-teenth century. In the Venetian school, Titian andTintoretto both painted the subject ofthe Madonna in glory, but the picturesare not notable compared with manyothers from their hands. From the North of Italy we naturallyturn next to the South, to inquire whatRaphael was doing at the same period inRome. Occupied by many great worksunder the papal patronage, he still foundtime for his favorite subject of the Ma-donna, painting some pictures in the stylesalready mastered, and two for the firsttime in the style of the Madonna in thesky. The first was the Foligno Madonna,now in the Vatican Gallery. It waspainted in 1511 for the popes secre-tary, Sigismund Conti, as a thank-offeringfor having escaped the danger of a fall-. Spaxish School. — Madonna on the Crescent Moon. THE MADONNA IN THE SKY. 85 ing meteor at Foligno. No thoughtfulobserver can be slow to recognize thesuperiority of this composition over allothers of its kind in point of unity. Hereis no formal row of saints, each absorbedin his or her own reflections, apart fromany common purpose. On the contrary,all unite in paying honor to the Queenof Heaven. Not less superior to his con-temporaries was the painters skill inarranging the figures of Mother and childwith such grace of equilibrium that theyseem to float in the upper air. In the Sistine Madonna, Raphael car-ried this form of composition to thehighest perfection. So simple and ap-parently unstudied is its beauty, thatwe do not realize the masterliness of itsart. We seem to be standing before analtar, or, better still, before an open win-dow, from which the curtains have beendrawn aside, allowing us to look directly 86 THE MADONNA IN ART. into the heaven of heavens.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade18, booksubjectmaryblessedvirginsaint
