promises made
to man, set forth in the exaltation and union of the mortal with the
immortal, when the human Mother and her divine Son are reunited and
seated on the same throne. Raphael placed on one side of the celestial
group, St. John the Baptist, representing sanctification through the
rite of baptism; and on the other, St. Jerome, the general symbol of
sanctification through faith and repentance. The cartoon of this grand
symbolical composition, in which all the figures were colossal, is
unhappily lost; the tapestry is missing from the Vatican collection;
two old engravings, however, exist, from which some idea may be formed
of the original group. (Passavant's Rafael, ii. 258.)

3. It will be interesting to remember that the earliest existing
impression taken from an engraved metal plate, is a "Coronation of the
Virgin." Maso Finiguerra, a skilful goldsmith and worker in niello,
living at Florence in 1434, was employed to execute a pix (the small
casket in which the consecrated wafer of the sacrament is deposited),
and he decorated it with a representation of the Coronation in
presence of saints and angels, in all about thirty figures, minutely
and exquisitely engraved on the silver face. Whether Finiguerra was
the first worker in niello to whom it occurred to fill up the lines
cut in the silver with a black fluid, and then by laying on it a piece
of damp paper, and forcibly rubbing it, take off the fac-simile of his
design and try its effect before the final process,--this we can not
ascertain; we only know that the impression of his "Coronation" is
the earliest specimen known to exist, and gave rise to the practice
of cutting designs on plates of copper (instead of silver), for the
purpose of multiplying impressions of them. The pix finished by Maso
in 1452 is now in the Florence Gallery in the "Salle des Bronzes." The
invaluable print, first of its species, exists in the National Library
at Paris. There is a very exact fac-simile of it in Otley's "History
of Engraving," Christ and the Virgin are here seated together on
a lofty architectural throne: her hands are crossed on her bosom,
and she bends her meek veiled head to receive the crown, which her
Son, who wears a triple tiara, places on her brow. The saints most
conspicuous are St. John the Baptist, patron of Florence and of the
church for which the pix was executed, and a female saint, I believe
St. Reparata, both standing; kneeling in front are St. Cosmo an