Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting

in connoisseurship, it is interesting enough to stimulate the student to the exercise of all his faculties. To begin with, we must make acquaintance with the aspect, and character of the painting. We shall then examine and cross-examine the evidence it offers of its own origin and kinship. After which, it will be in order to look abroad for other works by the same hand. If we find a sufficient number, we shall try to reconstruct the artistic personality of their author, and to determine how he was related to his contemporaries. Before a cave, half masked by a Gothic pavilion, sits the stately and placid Mother of Our Lord, with wrists crossed over her lap. She receives the homage of an eager shepherd who falls at her feet. Doing this, he blocks the entrance to the right, so that of his companion we see only a gesticulating hand. Opposite sits Joseph thinking his own thoughts. Between them stand the basin and ewer for washing the Holy Child, and the Holy Child Himself .lies swaddled in the manger with the pious ox and ass putting their sentimental heads together over Him. Up above, under the low ceilings of the toy edifice, in the midst of cherubim and lovely angels in adoration, the Eternal appears sending down His Spirit, the Dove, upon the Blessed Infant. Such in brief is what is presented to our eyes. It is no ordinary treatment of the subject. Theology and ritual must have dictated some of it?the Theophany undoubtedly. But what of the Holy Virgin? Sh... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.