influence on the worship and the representations of the Madonna,
I must place the battle of Lepanto, in 1571, in which the combined
fleets of Christendom, led by Don Juan of Austria, achieved a
memorable victory over the Turks. This victory was attributed by Pope
Pius V. to the especial interposition of the Blessed Virgin. 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