the same motherly tenderness, the same innocent and beautiful
babyhood. The mother holds her child close in her arms, pressing her
forehead to his, or bending her cheek to receive his kiss. He throws
his little arm about her neck, clinging to her veil or caressing her
face.

Besides this group of pictures by Bartolommeo, there are other
scattered instances of portrait Madonnas during the Italian
Renaissance, by men too great to be tied to the fashions of their day.
Mantegna was such a painter, and Luini another. All told, however,
their pictures of this sort make up a class too rare to deserve longer
description.

A century later, the Spanish school occasionally reverted to the same
style of treatment. A pair of notable pictures are the Madonna of
Bethlehem, by Alonzo Cano, and the Madonna of the Napkin, by Murillo.
Both are in Seville, the latter in the museum, the former still
hanging in its original place in the cathedral.

Of Cano's work, a great authority[1] on Spanish art has written, that,
"in serene, celestial beauty, it is excelled by no image of the
blessed Mary ever devised in Spain." Murillo's picture is better
known, and has a curious interest from its history. The cook in the
Capuchin monastery, where the artist had been painting, begged a
picture as a parting gift. No canvas being at hand, a napkin was
offered instead, on which the master painted a Madonna, unexcelled
among his works in brilliancy of color.

[Footnote 1: Stirling-Maxwell, in "Annals of the Artists of Spain."]