adonna as Witness, in which the Mother is preeminently the
Christ-bearer, wearing the honors of her proud position as witness to
her son's great destiny.

These subjects are mentioned in the order of philosophical climax, and
as we go from the first to the second, and from the second to the
third, we advance farther and farther into the experience of
motherhood. At the same time there is an increase in the dignity of
the Madonna and in her importance as an individual. In the Mater
Amabilis she is subordinate to her child, absorbed in him, so to
speak; his infantine charms often overmatch her own beauty. When she
rises to the responsibilities of her high calling, she is, for the
time being, of equal interest and importance. AEsthetically, she is
now even more attractive than her child, whose seriousness, in such
pictures, takes something from his childlikeness. Chronologically, our
list reads backwards, as the religious aspect of Mary's motherhood was
the first treated in art, while the naturalistic conception came last.
Regarded as expressive of national characteristics, the Mater Amabilis
is the Madonna best beloved in northern countries, while the other two
subjects belong specially to the art of the south.

It will be seen that any number of Madonna pictures, having been
arranged in the five groups designated in Part I., may be gathered up
and redistributed in the three classes of Part II. To make this clear,
the pictures mentioned in the first method of classification are
frequently referred to a second time, viewed from an entirely
different standpoint. Since the lines of cleavage are so widely
dissimilar in the two cases, both methods of study are necessary to a
complete understanding of a picture. By the first, we learn a
convenient term of description by which we may casually designate a
Madonna; by the second, we find its highest meaning as a work of art,
and are admitted to some new secret of a mother's love.

PART I.

MADONNAS CLASSED BY THE STYLE OF COMPOSITION.

THE MADONNA IN ART.

CHAPTER I.

THE PORTRAIT MADONNA.

The first Madonna pictures known to us are of the portrait style, and
are of Byzantine or Greek origin. They were brought to Rome and the
western empire from Constantinople (the ancient Byzantium), the
capital of the eastern empire, where a new school of Christian art had
developed out of that of ancient Greece. Justinian's conquest of Italy
sowed the new art-seed in a