Redeemer. More in front kneels St. Francis, who, while he looks up
to heaven with trusting and imploring love, extends his right hand
towards the worshippers, supposed to be assembled in the church,
recommending them also to the protecting grace of the Virgin. In the
centre of the picture, dividing these two groups, stands a lovely
angel-boy holding in his hand a tablet, one of the most charming
figures of this kind Raphael ever painted; the head, looking up, has
that sublime, yet perfectly childish grace, which strikes us in those
awful angel-boys in the "Madonna di San Sisto." The background is a
landscape, in which appears the city of Foligno at a distance; it is
overshadowed by a storm-cloud, and a meteor is seen falling; but above
these bends a rainbow, pledge of peace and safety. The whole picture
glows throughout with life and beauty, hallowed by that profound
religious sentiment which suggested the offering, and which the
sympathetic artist seems to have caught from the grateful donor. It
was dedicated in the church of the Ara-Coeli at Rome, which belongs
to the Franciscans; hence St. Francis is one of the principal figures.
When I was asked, at Rome, why St. Jerome had been introduced into the
picture, I thought it might be thus accounted for:--The patron saint
of the donor, St. Sigismund, was a king and a warrior, and Conti
might possibly think that it did not accord with his profession, as
an humble ecclesiastic, to introduce him here. The most celebrated
convent of the Jeronimites in Italy is that of St. Sigismund near
Cremona, placed under the special protection of St. Jerome, who
is also in a general sense the patron of all ecclesiastics; hence,
perhaps, he figures here as the protector of Sigismund Conti. The
picture was painted, and placed over the high altar of the Ara-Coeli
in 1511, when Raphael was in his twenty-eighth year. Conti died
in 1512, and in 1565 his grandniece, Suora Anna Conti, obtained
permission to remove it to her convent at Foligno, whence it was
carried off by the French in 1792. Since the restoration of the works
of art in Italy, in 1815, it has been placed among the treasures of
the Vatican.

* * * * *

2. Another perfect specimen of a votive picture of this kind, in a
very different style, I saw in the museum at Rouen, attributed there
to Van Eyck. It is, probably, a fine work by a later master of the
school, perhaps Hemmelinck. In the centre, the V