followed Raphael in representing the Queen of Heaven as a full-length
figure in the sky; but their conception has not the dignity
corresponding to the style of treatment.

Impatient and dissatisfied with such modern art, we turn back to the
old masters with new appreciation of their great gifts.




CHAPTER IV.

THE PASTORAL MADONNA.


It was many centuries before art, at first devoted exclusively to
figure painting, turned to the study of natural scenery. Thus it was
that Madonna pictures, of various kinds, had long been established in
popular favor before the idea of a landscape setting was introduced.
We need not look for interesting pictures of this class before the
latter part of the fifteenth century, and it was not until the
sixteenth that the pastoral Madonna, in its highest form, was first
produced. Even then there was no great number which show a really
sympathetic love of nature.

In the ideal pastoral, the landscape entirely fills the picture, and
the figures are, as it were, an integral part of it. Such pictures are
so rare that we write in golden letters the names of the few who have
given us these treasures.