rships his Madonna through
the medium of his craft as some great lady, "empress of heaven and of
earth." Rembrandt's picture, lacking this mysticism, gains, however,
in humanity; and however far even from our modern point of view it may
be as a creation embodying the divine Motherhood, it throbs with
tenderness. The homely interior, the good mother, the almost pathetic
_abandon_ of the sleeping child--surely no painter ever wrought
better, nor, we may be sure, more devoutly!

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. P.A.J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET, A LIVING
FRENCH PAINTER.]

Then the giant Peter Paul Rubens, with his facile brush, his acres of
canvas, covered with the virile arabesque by which he has transmitted
to us the record of a temperament so full of life that it needs no
great effort of imagination, before one of his crowded canvases, to
imagine the doughty Fleming back in our midst, and taking his place as
Jupiter upon his painted Olympus, reawakened to life. Yet, when he in
turn approaches this natal subject, his pagan brush touches the
canvas lightly, and all its deftness is given to the praise of Our
Lady and Our Lord. With him, as with the painters of all and differing
nationalities, both Mother and Child bear the strong impress of the
painter's surroundings. It is as though the miraculous birth had, by
some mysterious dispensation, taken place in each of the countries of
the world, the better to insure the comprehension of the message of
divine love to all peoples.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN
PAINTER.]

[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (FLEMISH: BORN 1599;
DIED 1641).]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. CARLO DOLCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1616; DIED
1686).]

[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. BONIFAZIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1494; DIED
1563).]

With Van Dyck, a little later, the Child is a young patrician; the
quality of the painter's imagination, influenced by his frequentation
of the princes of the earth, making him conceive the young Christ as a
magnificent man-child, fit to be called later to the high places of
the world, a serene and noble leader.

Somewhat differently did the Italians of the great epoch of painting,
Raphael, Titian, Veronese, even Bellini, who was earlier, conceive
their subject. While both Mother and Child with them were merely what
painters call a "bit" of painting, directly founded on close study of
a living woman and child, there was always present a religiou