[Footnote 3: See particularly Titian's works in the Louvre, of which
the Vierge au Lapin is an especially charming pastoral.]

In Italian art there are two famous pictures of this class: by
Francia, in the Munich Gallery, and by Filippino Lippi (or so
attributed), in the Pitti, at Florence. In both the _motif_ is the
same: in the foreground, a square inclosure surrounded by a
rose-hedge, with a hilly landscape in the distance; the Virgin
kneeling before her child in the centre. Filippino Lippi's is one of
those pictures whose beauty attracts crowds of admirers to the canvas.
Copyists are kept busy, repeating the composition for eager
purchasers, and it has made its way all over the world. The circle of
graceful angels who, with the boy St. John, join the mother in adoring
the Christ-child, is one of the chief attractions of the picture. It
is a pretty conceit that one of these angels showers rose leaves upon
the babe.

The pastoral Madonna is the sort of picture which can never be
outgrown. The charm of nature is as perennial as is the beauty of
motherhood, and the two are always in harmony. Here, then, is a
proper subject for modern Madonna art, a field which has scarcely
been opened by the artists of our own day. Such pastoral Madonnas as
have been painted within recent years are all more or less artificial
in conception. Compared with the idyllic charm of the sixteenth
century pictures, they seem like pretty scenes in a well-mounted
opera. We are looking for better things.