ters are Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, Correggio, Luini, Bellini, and Titian. The German Holbein’s Meyer Madonna also belongs in this period. From the seventeenth-century names I would add those of Carlo Dolce (with discrimination), Murillo (Spanish), and the two great Flemings, Rubens and Van Dyck. All these men understood well the representation of innocent, happy childhood. There are also many excellent modern Madonna pictures in the art stores by Gabriel Max, Bodenhausen, Dagnan-Bouveret, Sichel, Ferrari, and others.
The children’s special favorites among Raphael’s works are the Madonna of the Chair and the Sistine Madonna. In innumerable schoolrooms all over the land hangs one or the other of these two pictures. Many stories are told by the teachers of the beneficent influence of these noble ideals of motherhood and childhood upon pupils of every race and creed. Such subjects may be considered entirely apart from their original ecclesiastical significance as a universal type of the tenderest of human relations. I heard of a young high-school girl, obliged to give up her course because of tuberculosis, who talked constantly of the beautiful picture which hung in the schoolroom. The mother found upon inquiry that it was the Sistine Madonna, a copy was procured, and the girl’s last days were made happier by the gracious presence in her sick-room.
The two great Raphaels illustrate a contrast in motive which a child is quick to grasp. The child of the Chair Madonna nestles in his mother’s protecting
