all were at length exalted to the rank of patron saints, by having
festivals instituted in their honour. It is towards the end of the
fifteenth century, or rather a little later, that we first meet with
that charming domestic group, called the "Holy Family," afterwards
so popular, so widely diffused, and treated with such an infinite
variety.

* * * * *

Towards the end of this century sprung up a new influence,--the
revival of classical learning, a passionate enthusiasm for the poetry
and mythology of the Greeks, and a taste for the remains of antique
art. This influence on the representations of the Virgin, as far as
it was merely external, was good. An added dignity and grace, a more
free and correct drawing, a truer feeling for harmony of proportion
and all that constitutes elegance, were gradually infused into the
forms and attitudes. But dangerous became the craving for mere
beauty,--dangerous the study of the classical and heathen literature.
This was the commencement of that thoroughly pagan taste which in
the following century demoralized Christian art. There was now an
attempt at varying the arrangement of the sacred groups which led to
irreverence, or at best to a sort of superficial mannered grandeur;
and from this period we date the first introduction of the portrait
Virgins. An early, and most scandalous example remains to us in one
of the frescoes in the Vatican, which represents Giulia Farnese in the
character of the Madonna, and Pope Alexander VI. (the infamous Borgia)
kneeling at her feet in the character of a votary. Under the influence
of the Medici the churches of Florence were filled with pictures of
the Virgin, in which the only thing aimed at was an alluring and
even meretricious beauty. Savonarola thundered from his pulpit in the