n. A new
invocation was now added to her Litany, under the title of _Auxilium
Christianorum_; a new festival, that of the Rosary, was now added to
those already held in her honour; and all the artistic genius which
existed in Italy, and all the piety of orthodox Christendom, were now
laid under contribution to incase in marble sculpture, to enrich with
countless offerings, that miraculous house, which the angels had
borne over land and sea, and set down at Loretto; and that miraculous,
bejewelled, and brocaded Madonna, enshrined within it.

* * * * *

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Caracci school gave
a new impetus to religious, or rather, as it has been styled in
contradistinction, sacerdotal or theological art. If these great
painters had been remarkable merely for the application of new
artistic methods, for the success with which they combined the aims of
various schools--

"Di Michel Angiol la terribil via
E 'l vero natural di Tiziano,"

the study of the antique with the observation of real life,--their
works undoubtedly would never have taken such a hold on the minds of
their contemporaries, nor kept it so long. Everything to live must
have an infusion of truth within it, and this "patchwork ideal," as
it has been well styled, was held together by such a principle. The
founders of the Caracci school, and their immediate followers, felt
the influences of the time, and worked them out. They were devout
believers in their Church, and most sincere worshippers of the
Madonna. Guido, in particular, was so distinguished by his passionate
enthusiasm for her, that he was supposed to have been favoured by a
particular vision, which enabled him more worthily to represent her
divine beauty.

It is curious that, hand in hand with this development of taste and
feeling in the appreciation of natural sentiment and beauty, and
this tendency to realism, we find the associations of a peculiar and
specific sanctity remaining with the old Byzantine type. This arose
from the fact, always to be borne in mind, that the most ancient
artistic figure of the Madonna was a purely theological symbol;
apparently the moral type was too nearly allied to the human and
the real to satisfy faith. It is the ugly, dark-coloured, ancient
Greek Madonnas, such as this, which had all along the credit of
being miraculous; and "to this day," says Kugler, "the Neapolitan
lemonade-seller will allow