elicits the prompt demand for information about the original—where does he live, what is his name, etc. We must take pains to answer such questions intelligently and consistently. If we cannot learn much of the pictured child’s real story, we may at least place definitely the nationality, the period, and the social class, so to speak, while the face tells us something of the particular temperament. A little experience makes us adept in the art of inference and teaches us to note every detail which may give the clue to the child’s character. When a historical personage is represented, we have plenty of interesting material to connect with the portrait.
Child portraits were rare articles in the Italian Renaissance, but of course we all know that there is no rule without exception. Now and again some painter—Ghirlandajo, Botticelli, Pinturicchio—pleased himself by turning off the portrait of a boy or girl whose face had caught his fancy. Occasionally a fond parent, like the great Duchess Isabella d’Este or a Medici prince, gave an order for the likeness of a beloved child. We can count these exceptional pictures on the fingers, but they are precious enough to cherish both for their artistic and historic value.
With the great portrait schools of the seventeenth century the child came into his rightful art place. From this time forward children’s pictures occupy their proper proportion in the total product of any period and school of art. But with all this abundance of material one can never choose a child’s picture at random. It is not given to all in equal measure to
