t wonderful fourteenth
century, Dante was the greatest. He was the intimate friend of Giotto.
Through the communion of mind, not less than through his writings,
he infused into religious art that mingled theology, poetry, and
mysticism, which ruled in the Giottesque school during the following
century, and went hand in hand with the development of the power and
practice of imitation. Now, the theology of Dante was the theology of
his age. His ideas respecting the Virgin Mary were precisely those
to which the writings of St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas
Aquinas had already lent all the persuasive power of eloquence, and
the Church all the weight of her authority. Dante rendered these
doctrines into poetry, and Giotto and his followers rendered them
into form. In the Paradise of Dante, the glorification of Mary,
as the "Mystic Rose" (_Roxa Mystica_) and Queen of Heaven,--with
the attendant angels, circle within circle, floating round her in
adoration, and singing the Regina Coeli, and saints and patriarchs
stretching forth their hands towards her,--is all a splendid, but
still indefinite vision of dazzling light crossed by shadowy forms.
The painters of the fourteenth century, in translating these glories
into a definite shape, had to deal with imperfect knowledge and
imperfect means; they failed in the power to realize either their own
or the poet's conception; and yet--thanks to the divine poet!--that
early conception of some of the most beautiful of the Madonna
subjects--for instance, the _Coronation_ and the _Sposalizio_--has
never, as a religious and poetical conception, been surpassed by later
artists, in spite of all the appliances of colour, and mastery of
light and shade, and marvellous efficiency of hand since attained.

Every reader of Dante will remember the sublime hymn towards the close
of the Paradiso:--

"Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio!
Umile ed alta piu che creatura,
Terrains fisso d'eterno consiglio;

Tu se' colei che l'umana natura
Nobilitasti si, che 'l suo fattore
Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura;

Nel ventre tuo si raccese l'amore
Per lo cui caldo nell' eterna pace
Cosi e germinato questo fiore;

Qui se' a noi meridiana face
Di caritade, e giuso intra mortali
Se' di speranza fontana vivace:

Donna, se' tanto grande e tanto vali,
Che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre
Sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali;

La tua benignita noa pur soccorre