John the Evangelist
on the other side. There are sometimes angels.

The Pieta thus conceived as a purely religious and ideal impersonation
of the atoning Sacrifice, is commonly placed over the altar of
the sacrament, and in many altar-pieces it forms the centre of the
predella, just in front where the mass is celebrated, or on the door
of the tabernacle, where the Host is deposited.

When, with the Mater Dolorosa and St. John, Mary Magdalene is
introduced with her dishevelled hair, the group ceases to be properly
a Pieta, and becomes a representation rather than a symbol.

* * * * *

There are also examples of a yet more complex but still perfectly
ideal and devotional treatment, in which the Mourning Mother is
attended by saints.

A most celebrated instance of this treatment is the Pieta by Guido.
(Bologna Gal.) In the upper part of the composition, the figure of the
dead Redeemer lies extended on a white shroud; behind him stands the
Virgin-mother, with her eyes raised to heaven, and sad appealing face,
touched with so divine a sorrow--so much of dignity in the midst of
infinite anguish, that I know nothing finer in its way. Her hands
are resignedly folded in each other, not raised, not clasped, but
languidly drooping. An angel stands at the feet of Christ looking on
with a tender adoring commiseration; another, at his head, turns away
weeping. A kind of curtain divides this group from the lower part
of the picture, where, assembled on a platform, stand or kneel the
guardian saints of Bologna: in the centre, the benevolent St. Charles
Borromeo, who just about that time had been canonized and added to
the list of the patrons of Bologna by a decree of the senate; on the
right, St. Dominick and St. Petronius; on the left, St. Proculus
and St. Francis. These sainted personages look up as if adjuring the
Virgin, even by her own deep anguish, to intercede for the city; she
is here at once our Lady of Pity, of Succour, and of Sorrow. This
wonderful picture was dedicated, as an act of penance and piety, by
the magistrates of Bologna, in 1616, and placed in their chapel in the
church of the "Mendicanti," otherwise S. Maria-della-Pieta. It hung
there for two centuries, for the consolation of the afflicted; it
is now placed in the Academy of Bologna for the admiration of
connoisseurs.

OUR LADY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.

_Ital._ La Madonna Purissima. _Lat._ Regina sine labe or