picture as a thank-offering to God. The immaculate conception of
love and the miracle of birth are recurring themes in the symphony
of life. Love, religion and art have ever walked and ever will walk
hand in hand. Art is the expression of man's joy in his work; and
art is the beautiful way of doing things. Pope Julius was right--
work is religion when you put your soul into your task.

Giotto painted the "Mother and Child," and the mother was his wife,
and the child theirs. Another child came to them, and Giotto painted
another picture, calling the older boy Saint John, and the wee baby
Jesus. The years went by and we find still another picture of the
Holy Family by this same artist, in which five children are shown,
while back in the shadow is the artist himself, posed as Joseph. And
with a beautiful contempt for anachronism, the elder children are
called Isaiah, Ezekiel and Elijah. This fusing of work, love and
religion gives us a glimpse into the only paradise mortals know. It
is the Ideal--and the Natural.


The swift-passing years have lightly touched the little city of
Urbino, in Umbria. The place is sleepy and quiet, and you seek the
shade of friendly awnings to shield you from the fierce glare of the
sun. Standing there you hear the bells chime the hours, as they have
done for four hundred years; and you watch the flocks of wheeling
pigeons, the same pigeons that Vasari saw when he came here in
Fifteen Hundred Forty-one, for the birds never grow old. Vasari
tells of the pigeons, the old cathedral--old even then--the flower-
girls and fruit-sellers, the passing black-robed priests, the
occasional soldier, and the cobbler who sits on the curbstone and
offers to mend your shoes while you wait.