rativeness.[4] But when love melts her heart how gracious is
her unbending, how winning her smile! Once she goes so far as to play
in the fields with her little boy, quieting a rabbit with one hand for
him to admire. (La Vierge au Lapin, Louvre.) In other pictures she
holds him lying across her lap, smiling thoughtfully upon him. Such an
one is the Madonna with Sts. Ulfo and Brigida, in the Madrid Gallery.
The child is taking the flowers St. Brigida offers him, and his mother
looks down with the pleased expression of fond pride. Again, when her
babe holds his two little hands full of the roses his cousin St. John
has brought him, she smiles gently at the eagerness of the two
children. (Uffizi Gallery.)

[Footnote 4: See the Madonna of the Cherries in the Belvedere at
Vienna, and the Madonna and Saints in the Dresden Gallery.]

[Illustration: TITIAN.--MADONNA AND SAINTS.
(DETAIL.)]

Another similar composition reveals a still sweeter intimacy between
mother and son. The babe stretches out his hand coaxingly towards his
mother's breast, but she draws her veil about her, gently denying
his appeal. A more beautiful mother, or a more bewitching babe, it
were hard to find. Three fine half-length figures of saints complete
this composition, each of great interest and individuality, but not
necessary to the unity of action--the Madonna alone making a complete
picture. There are two copies of this work, one in the Belvedere at
Vienna, and one in the Louvre at Paris.

The _motif_ of this picture is not unique in art, as will have been
remarked in passing. The first duty of maternity, and one of its
purest joys, is to sustain the newborn life at the mother's breast. A
coarse interpretation of the subject desecrates a holy shrine, while a
delicate rendering, such as Raphael's or Titian's, invests it with a
new beauty. Other pictures of this class should be mentioned in the
same connection. There is one in the Hermitage Gallery at St.
Petersburg, attributed by late critics to the little-known painter,
Bernardino de' Conti. The Madonna's face, her hair drawn smoothly over
her temples, has a beautiful matronliness. Still another is the
Madonna of the Green Cushion, by Solario, in the Louvre. Here the babe
lies on a cushion before his mother, who bends over him ecstatically,
her fair young face aglow with maternal love as she sees his
contentment.

We have noticed that in one of Corregio's pictures the babe lies
asleep on his mo