[Illustration: GABRIEL MAX.--MADONNA AND CHILD.]

As the portrait picture was the first style of Madonna known to art,
so, also, it is the last. By a leap of nearly a thousand years, we
have returned, in our own day, to the method of the tenth century. It
is strange that what was once a matter of necessity should at last
become an object of choice. In the beginning of Madonna art, the
limited resources of technique precluded any attempts to make a more
elaborate setting. Such difficulties no longer stand in the way, and
where we now see a portrait Madonna, the artist has deliberately
discarded all accessories in order better to idealize his theme.

Take, for instance, the portrait Madonnas by Gabriel Max. Here are no
details to divert the attention from motherhood, pure and simple. We
do not ask of the subject whether she is of high or of low estate, a
queen or a peasant. We have only to look into the earnest, loving face
to read that here is a mother. There are two pictures of this sort,
evidently studied from the same Bohemian models. In one, the mother
looks down at her babe; in the other, directly at the spectator, with
a singularly visionary expression. When weary with the senseless
repetition of the set compositions of past ages, we turn with relief
to a simple portrait mother like this, at once the most primitive and
the most advanced form of Madonna art. It is only another case where
the simplest is the best.




CHAPTER II.