CHAPTER V.

THE MADONNA IN A HOME ENVIRONMENT.


A subject so sacred as the Madonna was long held in too great
reverence to permit of any common or realistic treatment. The pastoral
setting brought the mother and her babe into somewhat closer and more
human relations than had before been deemed possible; but art was slow
to presume any further upon this familiarity. The Madonna as a
domestic subject, represented in the interior of her home, was
hesitatingly adopted, and has been so rarely treated, even down to our
own times, as to form but a small group of pictures in the great body
of art.

[Illustration: SCHONGAUER.--HOLY FAMILY.]

The Northern painters naturally led the way. Peculiarly home-loving
in their tastes, their ideal woman is the _hausfrau_, and it was with
them no lowering of the Madonna's dignity to represent her in this
capacity. A picture in the style of Quentin Massys hangs in the Munich
Gallery, and shows a Flemish bedroom of the fifteenth century. At the
left stands the bed, and on the right burns the fire, with a kettle
hanging over it. The Virgin sits alone with her babe at her breast.

More frequently a domestic scene of this sort includes other figures
belonging to the Holy Family. A typical German example is the picture
by Schongauer in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna. The Virgin is seated
in homely surroundings, intent upon a bunch of grapes which she holds
in her hands, and which she has taken from a basket standing on the