H 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. E. A. Day 
 
 FINE ARTS 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924015008323 
 
N 7640.CM 1907 '""'"""""^ 
 The child in art, 
 
 3 1924 015 008 323 
 
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE 
 
 REYNOLDS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET BOYD CARPENTER 
 
 WITH FIFTY-OBTE ZLLUSTRATX0N8 
 
 SSCOND EDITION 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY; 
 BOSTON 
 
First Published . . . November tgo6 
 Second Edition . . March /go7 
 
The Author desires to take this opportunity 
 of thanking Mr. George Allen, and the 
 executors of the late Mr. Ruskin; Messrs. 
 Seeley and Co. ; Messrs. Smith, Elder and 
 Co. ; Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston and Co. ; 
 Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co. ; and the 
 Rev. Canon Beechihg, for their kindness in 
 allowing her to quote extracts from books 
 which are their copyrights. 
 
 The Palace, Ripon 
 August IB, 1906 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATE 
 
 The Age OP Innocence. ReynoldSj,^' Frontispiece 
 {National Gallery) '-^ 
 
 I. Hermes AND Dionysus, . . . To face page 6 
 
 {British Musewm) 
 From a photograph by the English Photo Co. 
 
 II. Bronze ' Ebos,' a? 8 
 
 {South Kensington Musevm) 
 
 III. Madonna and Child. Margaritone, . . „ 14 
 
 {National Gallery) 
 
 IV. Madonna and Child. Cimabue, . . ,, 20 
 
 {National Gallery) 
 V. Madonna and Child. Duccio, . . . „ 22 
 
 (Natiorud Gallery) 
 VI. Madonna and Child. Botticellij . . ,, 32 
 
 {National Gallery) 
 VII. Madonna and Child. Unknown, . . „ 36 
 
 (National Gallery) 
 VIII. Panel from the Organ Gallery. Delia 
 
 Robbia, ,j 38 
 
 From, a photograph hy Messrs. Anderson, Rome. 
 IX. Bronze from the High Altab op St. An- 
 tony's, Padua. Donatello, . . . ,, 40 
 {South Kensington Musewm) 
 X. The Virgin op the Rocks. Da Vinci, , „ 46 
 
 {NationM &8,Uery) 
 XI. Madonna and Child. Bellini, ... 54 
 
 {National Gallery) 
 XII. The 'Ansidei' Madonna. Raphael, . „ 70 
 
 {National Gallery) 
 
 xm. Madonna di San Sisto. Raphael, . . „ 78 
 
 {Dresden Gallery) 
 
 Prom a photograph by Mr. FroMZ Bamsfstaengl. 
 
 xiv. The Glorification op the Virgin. 
 
 Bertucci, „ 80 
 
 {National Gallery) 
 
102 
 108 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii 
 
 PLATE I 
 
 XV. The Holy Family. Del Sarto^ . To face potge i% 
 {National OaUery) 
 XVI. Madonna della Cesta. Gorreggio, . „ 84 
 
 (National Gfallery) 
 xvii. The Assumption of the Virgin. Titian, „ 90 
 (Venice) 
 From a photograph by Mr. Frami Hamfitaengl. 
 xviii. Tecb Meyer Madonna. Holbein, . . 4 
 (Dresden) '^, 
 
 From a phgtograph by Mr. From Bansfstaengl. ' 
 XIX. The Children op Charles i. Van Dyke, 
 (Turin) 
 
 From a photograph by Messrs. Anderson, Rome. 
 XX. Girl Feeding a Parrot. Lely, . . „ 112 
 
 (National Gallery) 
 XXI. The Dutch Housewife. Maes, . „ 118 
 
 (Nojtional Gallery) 
 xxii. The Court of a Dutch House. De Hooch, „ 120 
 (National Gallery) 
 
 XXIII. Blowing Bubbles. Netscher, . . „ 122 
 
 (National Gallery) 
 
 XXIV. Don Balthazar Carlos. Velasquez, . ,, 128 
 
 (Madrid) 
 From a photograph by Messrs. Anderson, Borne. 
 XXV. Beggar Boys. Murillo, . . . ,,130 
 
 (Dvhoioh Gallery) 
 XXVI. The Holy Family. Murillo, . . ,,132 
 
 (National GaUery) 
 xfMU. Girl with Apple. Greuze, . . . ,134 
 
 (National GaUery) 
 
 XXVIII. The Music Party. Watteau, ,, 136 
 
 (Wallace Collection) 
 
 XXIX. The Schoolmistress. Fragonard, . . ,, 138 
 
 (Wallace Collection) 
 XXX. Study of Grief. Greuze, . . • ,, 140 
 (Wallace Collection) 
 
 XXXI. Madame Lb Brun and her Daughter. 
 
 Madame Le Brun, j 142 
 
 (Zouvre) 
 From a photograph by Mr. Franz Hwnsfstaervjl. 
 
 XXXII. A Child learning to Read. De- 
 
 laroche, . . . ' . ■ » 144 
 
 ( Wallace Collection) 
 
viii THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 PIATE 
 
 XXXIII. The Little Princes in the Tower. 
 
 Delaroche, . . . .To face page 146 
 ( Wallace Collection) 
 
 XXXIV. La Vibrge Consolatbice. Bouguereau, „ 148 
 
 (iMxemhowrg Gallery) 
 From a photograph by Messrs. W. A. ManseU and Co. 
 XXXV. Miss Penelope Boothby. Reynolds^ . „ 152 
 
 ; By kind permission of Mrs. Thwaites. 
 
 XXXVI. Heads op Angels. Reynolds^ ^ „ , . „ 154 
 
 [IfaUonal Gallery) • • 
 XXXVII. St. John in the Wilderness. Reynolds, „ 166 
 
 ( Wallace Collection) 
 xxxviii. The Blue Boy. Gainsborough, . . „ 168 
 From a photograph iy Mr. Augustus Rischgitz. 
 XXXIX. Playmates. Romney, . . . . „ 162 
 XL. Princess Charlotte. Lawrence, . „ 164 
 
 xLi. Nature. Lawrence, ....,, 166 
 xLii. Master Lambton. Lawrence, . . „ 168 
 xLiii. Nature Blowing Bubbles por her 
 
 Children. Hilton, . . . . „ 172 
 [Tate GaMery) 
 xLiv. The Blind Fiddler. Wilkie, . . „ 174 
 (National Gallery) 
 xlv. His First Offence. Lady Stanley, . „ 178 
 (Tate GaUery) 
 xLvi. Carnation Lily, Lily Rose. Sargent, 180 
 
 (Tate Gallery) 
 xLvii. My Second Sermon. MiUais, . . ,^ 182 
 
 From a photograph by Messrs. W. A. ManseU amd Co. 
 xLviii. The Man with the Scythe. La Thangue 184 
 
 (Tote Gallery) 
 xLix. Good Luck to your Fishing ! Watts, . 188 
 
 L. The Messenger. Watts. . . igo 
 
 (Tate Gallery) ' " 
 
 The reproductions of 'Good Luck to your Fishing' and 
 'The Messenger' are from ^t. HoUyer's series of Watts' 
 photographs (9 Pembroke Square, W.). 
 
the; CHILD IN ART 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OUR subject is the Child in Art. 
 The word Art conjures up the 
 figure of Greece, mother of arts ; and yet 
 here we meet with disappointment. We 
 behold heroes, gods, and goddesses, but 
 we look in vain for the child. We realise 
 what Mr. Ruskin calls ' the singular defect 
 in Greek art,'^ namely, the absence of child- 
 hood. This ' defect ' is common, not only 
 to Greek art, but to all the early art of the 
 Eastern world. 
 
 Such is the fact. Can it be that the 
 explanation is, as has been suggested, that 
 the art of an epoch is unconsciously the 
 reflection of its religious briefs ? 
 
 » The Art of England (1887). 
 
2 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 All early art was largely influenced, if 
 not wholly inspired; by the religious ideal 
 of the nation which gave it birth, and from 
 the artist's conception wrought in ever- 
 lasting stone we may learn something of 
 the spirit which led the ancient races of 
 the East, once so powerful, to dare and 
 do great things. In the same way, 
 from a study of the religious philosophy 
 of each we may perhaps divine the reason 
 for the particular form which their art has 
 taken. To attempt such a task, interest- 
 ing as it would be, is beyond the range 
 of our present study ; but a single example 
 is sufficient to show this. It is noticeable 
 that the Hebrews, as a nation, have no 
 art such as painting and sculpture. They 
 are indeed both poetical and musical ; their 
 poetry proves that they took an intense 
 delight in the beauties of nature; their 
 buildings show a sense of the beautiful in 
 architecture. But they were a nomadic 
 race, and this in itself was sufficient to 
 preclude the possibility of the free develop- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 3 
 
 merit of art. Religibn also exerted a re- 
 straining power: the command, ' Thou shalt 
 not make to thyself any graven image,' 
 prohibited the pursuit of plastic art- 
 Sculpture, indeed, appears to have been 
 the earliest form of art; and as every 
 language has different dialects, so did 
 sculpture, the language of form, assume 
 different characteristics according to the 
 spirit and nature — shall we say, the spiritual 
 nature ? — of the nation to which the artist 
 belonged. While to the Jews the repre- 
 sentation of God in any form was for- 
 bidden, the other important Eastern races, 
 notably the Egyptians, held it a sin to 
 .represent a god in any but a symbolic 
 form. The Egyptians and Assyrians (like 
 the Greeks and Romans) believed in a 
 hierarchy of gods, some greater, some lesser 
 in power, but all incontestably greater than 
 men ; and as such were they represented. 
 Colossal monuments and huge statues were 
 erected in their honour, in the form sym- 
 bolic of each particular god, and adorned 
 
4 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 with hieroglyphics typical of their indi- 
 vidual attributes and powers. Not till a 
 later age" were the gods represented in 
 human form; though 'a great step was 
 made,' as Edgar Quinet remarks, 'when 
 the human head was substituted for that 
 of an animal in the statues of the gods.' 
 So we need hardly be surprised that in 
 early Egyptian and Assyrian art, the re- 
 presentation of womanhood was rare, and 
 that of childhood almost unknown ; the 
 only notable example of the latter being 
 that of the infant Horus, child of Isis and 
 Osiris, and analogous to the Greek Apollo. 
 Even the more human ideal of the 
 Greeks did not bring the child into pro- 
 minence. At its very earliest Greek art 
 is in essence the same as the monuments 
 of Egypt and Assyria, but in course of 
 time their ideal changed ; the yearning 
 after truth allied itself with and finally 
 lost itself in, the desire for ideal beauty, 
 and it is rather as a manifestation of the 
 latter that we most commonly regard the 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 5 
 
 lovely specimens of sculpture that have 
 survived the rise and fall of empires. The 
 Greeks carried their love of the beautiful 
 to such an extreme that from saying that 
 everything good was beautiful, they went 
 on to hold that everything beautiful was 
 good; they worshipped the beautiful for 
 its own sake, not for what it represented. 
 In an age when kingdoms were gained, 
 held, and governed by the might of the 
 sword, though they thought of the beauty 
 of humanity, they did not consider it 
 merely as beautiful in tenderness and 
 grace. The ideal beauty for which the 
 Greeks strove was the perfection of intel- 
 lectual culture and physical development. 
 How, then, should the undeveloped forms 
 of childhood find a place in Greek art, 
 which dealt only with the beauty of 
 strength and perfected maturity? Their 
 ideal was an intellectual, not a spiritual 
 one, and we cannot help realising this, 
 even when looking at the most beautiful 
 of Greek statues. It only needs breath 
 
6 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 to make it live, but we feel that, could 
 we give it life, it would wander from end 
 to end of creation, looking for what it 
 has lost — its soul. Perhaps it is just this 
 which constitutes their undying charm — 
 the lack of soul, and yet the longing for 
 it most vividly expressed — yet it makes us 
 wonder what was amiss with Greece that 
 she never found what she so earnestly 
 sought. 
 
 ' It is,' says Ruskin, ' the singular defect 
 in Greek art, that it never gives you any 
 conception of Greek children,'^ and what- 
 ever the reason for this omission, it is cer- 
 tainly most noticeable. One or two 
 isolated exceptions occur to our memories ; 
 the statue of Hermes and the infant 
 Dionysos, of which there are casts both 
 in the British Museum and at South 
 Kensington (Plate i.) ; the statue of Eirene 
 carrying the baby Ploutos; and perhaps 
 one or two statues of boys nearing man- 
 hood. In Roman art we are confronted 
 
 1 The Art of England {1SB7). 
 
PLATE 1 
 
 HERMES AND DIONYSOS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 7 
 
 by the same remarkable fact. Pagan 
 Rome borrowed her art from Greece ; she 
 borrowed Greek forms, but, lacking the 
 spirit in which they were conceived, she 
 failed to inspire them with life. The 
 Romans were a more brutal nation, fitted 
 to undertake and fulfil military enter- 
 prises, to found and govern empires, and 
 in their hands art deteriorated with great 
 rapidity. The inexorableness of their laws 
 and the servile homage paid to their rulers 
 were as little likely to promote the child 
 to a conspicuous place in their art as the 
 ideal of the Greeks. 
 
 Childhood, indeed, might be an unknown 
 period in Greek civilisation, but for one 
 child, who, both in myths and arts, is 
 always a child, and who may, from his 
 appearance in every age of art, be said to 
 hold the secret of perpetual youth. Eros, 
 or Cupid, as he is perhaps betljer known to 
 us — an inconsistent, happy, frolicsome babe 
 —is to be seen in statuary, wall-paintings, 
 bas-reliefs, friezes, on Greek and Roman 
 
8 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 vases ; everywhere in fact, where he could 
 find a space in which to sport or a nook in 
 which to rest (Plate ii.). Such a hold had 
 he on the fancies of the Pagan mind that we 
 find him, either solitary or among myriads 
 of his fellows, in whichever direction we 
 may chance to turn. Sometimes armed 
 with bow and arrows ; sometimes in attend- 
 ance on gods and goddesses ; sporting with 
 nymphs on the margins of silvery foun- 
 tains ; flying at will through the air ; from 
 the best period of Greek art to its decline, 
 he holds his own. Bequeathed to Roman 
 artists, he reigns there with equal security ; 
 and though not conspicuous during the 
 period when early Christian art came to 
 the fore, at the dawn of the Renaissance 
 he returns to his former popularity. 
 
 But is he really a child? Nay, rather 
 ' an immortal type of the imagination under 
 the likeness of a child.' 
 
 And why should the Greeks have chosen 
 a child figure for the impersonation of 
 Love ? Was it the helpless inconsistency. 
 
PLATE It 
 
 BRONZE "EROS" 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 9 
 
 the clinging tenderness, the timid boldness 
 of childhood that appealed to them as 
 symbolic of Love? was it because, like 
 Love, a child finds an entrance every- 
 where, sitting enthroned in the hearts of 
 all? The door of no heart can bar out 
 Love, and at the touch of a child's hand 
 the most rui^y key will turn. 
 
 With the exception, then, of Eros, we 
 have found no children in Pagan art. Mr. 
 Ruskin has drawn our attention to the 
 fact that the art of Greece never gives us 
 any conception of Greek children. ' But,' 
 he continues, ' from the moment when the 
 spirit of Christianity had been entirely in- 
 terpreted to the Western races, the sanctity 
 of womanhood worshipped in the Madonna, 
 and the sanctity of childhood in unity with 
 that of Christ, became the light of every 
 honest hearth, and the joy of every pure 
 and chastened soul.'^ 
 
 To trace this will be our endeavour in 
 the succeeding chapters. 
 
 1 The Art of England {1381). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WE have noticed the lack of children 
 in Pagan art ; we must now turn 
 to that which received its impetus from 
 the spread of Christianity. Simultaneous 
 with the decline of Greek and Roman art 
 was the rise of the faith which was to work 
 such a miracle in the history of art, and 
 raise it from the level to which it had sunk. 
 In the catacombs we shall find the 
 earliest examples of Christian art. As we 
 should expect, they are sacred in character, 
 scenes from the Old and New Testaments 
 being depicted on the walls. The persecu- 
 tions which the professors of Christianity 
 had so long endured must naturally have 
 coloured their choice of subjects, and it 
 is remarkable that those most frequently 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 11 
 
 selected were from the Old Testament, while 
 the scenes from the life of our Saviour re- 
 present him not as a child, but as a healer, 
 a worker of miracles, and even more fre- 
 quently as the Good Shepherd. Upon the 
 sufferings of his life they did not dwell. 
 
 With the conversion of Constantine 
 this art was lifted into a more congenial 
 atmosphere. For several centuries Byzan- 
 tium, or Constantinople as we now know it, 
 was the chief centre of learning, and there 
 the distinct style of art called Byzantine 
 was sedulously cultivated. Though differ- 
 ent in spirit, and, to a certain extent, in 
 exJ)ression, from the older and Pagan forms 
 of art, it owed its peculiar character in a 
 large measure to the Eastern art that had 
 preceded it. Whereas the art of the cata- 
 combs had always represented the Christ 
 as in the prime of life, with the cultiva- 
 tion of Byzantine art it became more com- 
 mon to paint him as a child, the Child of 
 promise and prophecy in whom is built 
 up all the hope of our faith. 
 
12 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 But this art, whose roots had been fos- 
 tered and developed underground, and 
 whose shoots gave signs of such promise, 
 was destined to be checked by a sudden 
 frost — the frost of ecclesiastical interfer- 
 ence. The Church, it is true, sanctioned 
 as fit, subjects which the Christians had 
 hitherto shrunk from painting, such as the 
 passion and crucifixion of our Lord, the 
 tortures and martyrdoms of saints, but 
 any benefit which may have been likely 
 to accrue from this was speedily quenched 
 by the severe control exercised by the 
 Church. The mode of representing the 
 Virgin and Child was fixed according to 
 rule, and a distinct type of features was 
 assigned to her. To paint the Child 
 according to nature would have been the 
 height of irreverence, and in general he 
 is represented as a perfectly proportioned, 
 but small, man. (See Margaritone's 
 ' Madonna and Child,' page 14). 
 
 So, under the tyranny of ecclesiastical 
 decrees, art lost its freedom. Since the 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 13 
 
 Church decreed that art should be con- 
 ventional, it became no longer necessary, 
 or even advisable, to study nature. Artists 
 degenerated into mechanical workmen, 
 whose only necessary quahfications were 
 technical skill and a capacity for exact 
 and slavish imitation. Countless repro- 
 ductions of the same type were turned 
 out without eflFort; objects designed for 
 adoration, yet destined inevitably from 
 mere force of repetition to breed and foster 
 superstition among the masses. The proof 
 of this is to be seen in Russia to-day, 
 where sacred art is at the same stage as 
 it was in the days of Justinian. Even 
 in Naples, where we might have expected 
 a higher ideal, the common people main- 
 tain a marked preference for a Madonna 
 of the Byzantine type. 'The fidelity to 
 fixed types, to few and dominating con- 
 ceptions, is a characteristic common to 
 aU religions,' says a French writer,^ and 
 however we may take exception to this 
 
 ' C. Bayet, L'Art Bysantin, p. 105. 
 
14 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 statement, it is truly applicable to that 
 stunted form of belief, falsely called Chris- 
 tianity, which inspired the Byzantine ideal. 
 But the darkest hour is always that 
 which immediately precedes the dawn, 
 and the division of the Churches was the 
 signal for the parting of the clouds which 
 hung gloomily about the prison of art. 
 The Greek and Latin Churches went their 
 several ways. The state of art in Russia 
 shows what amount of progress was made 
 by the one ; from the other, the tiny germ 
 of life has grown into a tree, the branches 
 of which have filled the land, first of Italy, 
 and then of the whole of Western Europe. 
 Not at once, however, did this greater 
 freedom exalt the child to general notice. 
 The doctrines of the Latin Church in- 
 sisted on an anthropomorphic conception 
 of God, a being to be approached through 
 intermediary forces; it also laid great 
 stress on individual and personal responsi- 
 bility. Therefore, though indirectly affect- 
 ing childhood, by affecting the conditions 
 
s 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 a 
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 5 
 u 
 
 o 
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 < 
 
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 % 
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 R 
 
 < 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 15 
 
 of family life, it had in reality very little 
 in common with the child nature. The 
 time was not yet when the Holy Child 
 should be depicted as a real child, human 
 yet divine, instead of merely a type of 
 awe-inspiring divinity. 
 
 To free itself entirely from the para- 
 lysing fetters of the old traditions was the 
 work of years; Byzantine influence died 
 hard, and until the thirteenth century 
 Italian art was more or less under its 
 tyranny. An example of this is the picture 
 by Margaritone, here reproduced (Plate 
 III.). This artist — sculptor, painter, and 
 architect — died an old and heart-broken 
 man, ' because he had outlived the ideals of 
 his youth, and saw them superseded by new 
 methods which overleapt the sacred barriers 
 of traditionaUsm.' His picture of the 
 ' Madonna and Child,' which hangs in the 
 vestibule at the National Gallery, should 
 excite a deeper interest than is usually 
 bestowed upon it by the average visitor. 
 Compared with the exquisite creations of 
 
16 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 the Renaissance which hang in the rooms 
 beyond, it may seem lifeless and soulless 
 in its exact formal lines and stiff, unnatural 
 attitudes; yet it is one of the stepping- 
 stones to the great productions of Peru- 
 gino, Raphael, Da Vinci, Bellini, and the 
 rest, and by a careful study of its pecu- 
 liarities, we shall the more appreciate 
 those paintings which are already dear to 
 us. 
 
 This picture is really a series of pictures, 
 and consists of several panels. The outer 
 ones, representing scenes from the lives of 
 the saints, show signs of age, being some- 
 what faded and partly obliterated. The 
 central panel is what chiefly interests us. 
 The Virgin is seated on a throne, dressed 
 in a rich robe, her head encircled with 
 fleurs-de-lys, her eyes fixed, her attitude 
 betokening indifference to the Child on 
 her knee. Surrounded by formal draperies, 
 his hand raised in the act of blessing, 
 his whole bearing stiff" and unnatural, his 
 countenance forbidding ; can we call this 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 17 
 
 a child? The whole picture is to our 
 modern minds unreal, but we must re- 
 member it was meant to teach rather than 
 to please. The stern face and forbidding 
 aspect of the Virgin were meant to convey 
 to the uneducated mass of the people the 
 fact that she was the Mother of God; 
 the broad halo surrounding the Child's 
 head, the roll of the book in his hand, 
 the formal rigidity of his attitude, were 
 tokens of his divinity; he was in essence 
 the Son of God. The thought of Christ 
 as man had not occurred to the artist; 
 or, if it had, was put aside as an irrever- 
 ence. 
 
 ^This picture was painted in the thir- 
 teenth century, and shows us the professed 
 style of Byzantine art. We can only 
 wonder at the extraordinary tenacity with 
 which it clings to life in the Eastern 
 Church to this day. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ' There is a day in Spring 
 When under all the earth the secret germs 
 Begin to stir and glow before they bud. 
 The wealth and festal growth of midsummer 
 Lies in the heart of that inglorious hour 
 Which no man names with blessing, though its work 
 Is blessed by all the world. Such days there are 
 In the slow history of the growth of souls.' 
 
 AND this might equally be said of art. 
 It would be very difficult to assign 
 a definite date to the earliest beginning of 
 the Renaissance. Doubtless many men, 
 whose names have long been forgotten, 
 played quite as important a part in the 
 initiation of the great reform, as those we 
 reverence as emancipators of art from the 
 tyranny of the type. 
 
 Cimabue is generally spoken of as the 
 evangelist of freedom; but his honours 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 19 
 
 must be shared with many forgotten 
 artists, and more particularly with Niecolo 
 Pisano, for the first link of the chain of 
 traditionalism had been broken by sculp- 
 ture. TiU a later age, sculpture and 
 painting went hand in hand, sculpture 
 ever the more daring in breaking fresh 
 ground, and starting fresh tracks ; but 
 it was long before inspiration was found in 
 Nature. Slavish copying had gone on for 
 so long that not only had the powers of 
 drawing nature been lost, but also that 
 of perception ; till to the Byzantine artist 
 the gorgeous and the tender tints of 
 earth and sky had no meaning. He read 
 the book of nature in an edition, an ex- 
 purgated edition, of his own, which told 
 him that the sky was gold, not with the 
 rays of the sunset, but merely as a fitting 
 background for the Virgin and Child. In 
 the same way, he was blind to the wonder- 
 ful sanctity of childhood. He painted a 
 figure which he called the infant Christ, 
 but he did not paint the child. His faith 
 
20 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 did not embrace the thought that Christ 
 became a real and human child for the 
 express purpose of showing the world that 
 a little child is the one being on earth who 
 most nearly approaches a divine ideal. 
 His memory did not travel back to the 
 many occasions when a little child had 
 formed the text on which the teaching 
 of the Christ was based. 
 
 Contrast Cimabue's picture of the 
 Madonna and Child (Plate iv.) with that by 
 Margaritone. It is true the attitudes are 
 stiff; it is not, however, the attitudes or 
 even the composition of the picture which 
 mark the change so definitely, but rather 
 the quality of expression. Margaritone's 
 Madonna and Child had no expression, 
 and the very lack of it made them appear 
 gaunt and forbidding; compared with 
 Cimabue's they were mere motionless lay 
 figures. But these figures might have 
 been studied in life, for though drawn 
 according to Byzantine methods, there is 
 an element of thought introduced, which is 
 
PLATE IV 
 
 MADCNNA AND CHILD 
 
 CIMABUE 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 21 
 
 entirely absent from Margaritone's picture. 
 The Virgin, whose dark robes give rather a 
 gloomy aspect to the picture, holds the 
 ChUd in her arms ; her face is fuU of a 
 majestic sadness, and far more tender than 
 would have been approved by any Byzan- 
 tine artist. The Child is still a man in 
 miniature, but the expression of his face, 
 though serious, is more natural and,pleasing. 
 The attendant angels, each with a broad 
 halo, gaze at the mother and child with a 
 loving reverence which is quite clearly 
 expressed in their attitudes and features. 
 
 There is a certain resemblance in this 
 picture to another Madonna and Child 
 painted by Cimabue for the Rucellai 
 Chapel of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, 
 where it stiU hangs. Its reception by the 
 people proves what a marked advance 
 Cimabue had made on the work of earlier 
 artists. We are told by Vasari, a Floren- 
 tine, and therefore the artist's fellow- 
 countryman, that the picture * was an 
 object of so much admiration to the people 
 
.■>f; 
 
 22 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 of that day — they having then never seen 
 anything better — that it was carried in 
 solemn procession, with the sound of 
 trumpets and other festal demonstrations, 
 from the house of Cimabue to the church, 
 he himself being highly rewarded and 
 honoured for it.' 
 
 Our next illustration (Plate v.) is repro- 
 duced from a picture painted by Duccio 
 di Buoninsegna, Cimabue's contemporary, 
 though about twenty years his junior. In 
 his painting of childhood Duccio was 
 superior to all the artists of his day. He 
 is represented in the National Gallery by 
 four pictures, one of which is of the Virgin 
 and Child. We may call this the first 
 picture in which the relationship of mother 
 and child is expressed. In Margaritone's, 
 and even Cimabue's, the Virgin does not 
 exhibit any great devotion to her child ; 
 nor is the child apparently conscious that 
 it is his mother who holds him. Both are 
 separate entities, neither dependent on the 
 other, except in so far as the dignity of the 
 
PLATE r 
 
 MADONNA AND CHILD 
 
 UUCCIO 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 23 
 
 Virgin may be said to be derived from the 
 ChUd. But in this Madonna of Duccio we 
 see a motherly tenderness rarely surpassed 
 by even the greatest artists of later times ; 
 she bends her head towards the Child with 
 a look of love that is also adoration. In 
 the Child's manner there is a kind of sweet 
 obtrusiveness ; heedless of the adoring 
 angels above and around, he refuses to be 
 ignored by his mother, and draws aside her 
 veil that he may look the more closely into 
 her face. How far more childlike than the 
 unnatural infant of Margaritone, and even 
 the more animated babe of Cimabue. It 
 is unfortunate that the ravages of time and 
 injudicious cleaning should have rendered 
 the green ground-tint clearly visible, but 
 the expression of the two chief faces is in 
 no way impaired by this ; and we find in 
 this picture almost the first signs that the 
 artist appreciated the humanity as well as 
 the divinity of the infant Christ. 
 
 This message was carried to a climax by 
 a pupil of Cimabue, Giotto, whose fame 
 
24 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 rapidly obscured that of his master, as 
 Dante in his Purgatorio reminds us. The 
 boy, who was the son of Bondone, a 
 peasant, had been set to watch sheep, 
 when he was found by Cimabue to be 
 sketching one of his flock upon a stone. 
 The painter, astonished at the talent 
 shown by these amateur attempts of a boy 
 of ten, took him to Florence, and educated 
 him to an artistic career. The promise of 
 early youth was fulfilled, and by the age of 
 thirty Giotto had attained such fame that 
 he was invited to assist in the decoration 
 of the Basilica of St. Peter's, Rome. The 
 messenger sent by the Pope asked for 
 some proof of Giotto's skill. The artist, 
 taking a brush full of colour, drew, with 
 one sweep of the wrist, a perfect circle 
 as sufficient evidence of his capabilities. 
 
 In his frescoes in the Arena Chapel at 
 Padua, we have interesting examples of 
 his treatment of childhood. The frescoes, 
 thirty-eight in number, represent scenes 
 from the lives of the Virgin and her 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 25 
 
 parents, episodes in the infancy of Christ, 
 terminating with the finding of him in the 
 Temple. Three are specially interesting 
 to us. 
 
 ' The Presentation of the Virgin.' The 
 historian relates how at the age of three she 
 was taken by her parents to the Temple to 
 be dedicated to the service of God. They 
 set her down at the lowest of the Temple 
 steps, when to the amazement of all 
 beholders, she ascended them without any 
 assistance. Giotto has portrayed the Virgin 
 as a dwarf woman ; why, is not quite clear, 
 since two other frescoes give proof that he 
 was capable of painting children. 
 
 In ' The Presentation of Christ in the 
 Temple' we may see that Giotto had at 
 any rate studied nature and done his best 
 to draw what he saw. The Virgin has 
 placed the Child in the arms of Simeon; 
 but, babylike, he resents the change from 
 the firm, soft support of his mother's arms 
 to the unaccustomed embrace of a stranger ; 
 he longs and even struggles to return to 
 
26 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 her, quite unlike the contented child in the 
 picture of the same scene by Gaddi, one of 
 Giotto's school ; this baby, in spite of his 
 mother's outstretched arms, seems quite 
 happy with the old man whose words of 
 blessing are as acceptable to him as the 
 Madonna's caressing tones. 
 
 ' The Massacre of the Innocents ' is the 
 last of the trio we have chosen to glance 
 at. The slain children are thrown in a 
 heap ; the mothers stand in groups, some . 
 hfting appealing hands to Herod who 
 watches the scene from a balcony, some 
 clasping their little ones in a vain attempt 
 to save them from a barbarous death. The 
 effect of these actions is to lessen the 
 impression of petrified horror, which, by 
 intensifying the expressions of grief, would 
 be imparted to the composition. Un- 
 doubtedly, Giotto's influence did much for 
 the naturalisation of childhood in art. He 
 noticed the unstudied and graceful atti- 
 tudes of a child, and tried to reproduce 
 them in his pictures ; though modern critics 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 27 
 
 may find many faults in line and composi- 
 tion. We have also another cause for 
 gratitude. Not only did Giotto see the 
 natural form as distinguished from the 
 accepted or traditional form, but he created 
 a revolution in colouring. The Byzantine 
 artist had maintained a strict adherence to 
 his symbolic scheme of colours ; but Giotto 
 saw with his own eyes the colours of 
 nature, and perhaps realised that they re- 
 presented a far higher symbolism in that 
 they had been painted by the hand of God. 
 ' Suddenly, Giotto threw aside all the 
 glitter and all the conventionalism; and 
 declared that he saw the sky blue, the 
 table-cloth white, and angels when he 
 dreamed of them, rosy. And he simply 
 founded the schools of colour in Italy — 
 Venetian and all. . . . And what is more, 
 nobody discovered much about colour after 
 him.'i 
 
 Of Giotto's immediate successors, Andrea 
 Orcagna is perhaps the most celebrated. 
 
 * Ruskin, Mornings in Florence. New York, 1886, p. 27. 
 
28 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 In one of his wall pictures in the Campo 
 Santo at Pisa, 'The Triumph of Death,' 
 we notice a use of the child form often 
 favoured by the old masters. The picture 
 is more impressive than many sermons, 
 representing a crowd of merrymakers, the 
 rich and well-to-do of this world, surrounded 
 by all the joys of life, with Cupids hovering 
 here and there about them. Towards this 
 group sweeps^ the figure of Death, a ghastly 
 and horrible female, with attendant angels 
 and demons. She ignores a group of 
 crippled beggars, who lift imploring hands, 
 as if pleading for release from life, and passes 
 on to those fuU of health and strength. 
 As she mows them down with her scythe, 
 their souls float upwards in the shapes of 
 new-born infants, to be dragged by demons 
 to the mouth of a volcano, or transported 
 by angels to a celestial country. In later 
 pictures of the Renaissance myriads of 
 tiny cherubs are frequently to be foimd, 
 to which the same significance may be 
 attached. Hogarth calls it the most extra- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 29 
 
 ordinary of all art's chimeras, yet says that 
 * a painter's heaven would be nothing with- 
 out swarms of these little inconsistent 
 objects, flying about, or perching on the 
 clouds; and yet there is something so 
 agreeable in their form that the eye is 
 reconciled and overlooks the absurdity, 
 and we find them in the painting and 
 carving of every church. St. Paul's is full 
 of them.' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A PAINTER of saints,' it has been 
 said, 'should be a saint himself.' 
 In other words, since a man's character is 
 always reflected in his art, his aims should 
 be high, his thoughts pure, his whole life 
 true to a noble ideal, if he would set forth 
 on his canvas a worthy expression of the 
 highest and holiest. We must remember 
 that in the Middle Ages education was the 
 privilege of the few, and in default of 
 books, pictures were the means by which 
 the Church impressed on the mass of the 
 people the majesty and dignity of the 
 Christ, loading the child-form with gold 
 and rich draperies as befitting the King of 
 kings. The paintings of the Renaissance, ■ 
 inspired as they were by a truer conception 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 31 
 
 of Christ, taught men to understand better 
 the mystery of the relationship between 
 God and man. So the artists who painted 
 from the highest motives, infusing into 
 their work all they knew of the divine, 
 preached in their pictures more eloquent 
 sermons than many spoken from the pulpit. 
 Such a man was Fra Angelico, a gentle 
 and loving soul, childlike, in his simphcity, 
 living oh earth in a heaven created by 
 his own angelic character. His soul was 
 mirrored in his art ; all his paintings being 
 characterised by the same sweetness and 
 devotion that distinguished him in life. 
 His picture of the Madonna and Child in 
 the Monastery of San Marco, Venice, some- 
 times spoken of as the 'Madonna of the 
 Star,' shows the influence of Fra Angelico 's 
 religious life. All that the loving and 
 reverent imagination of the painter could 
 conceive as fitting for the Mother of his 
 Saviom- is in this picture. The Virgin, 
 with the Child in her arms, stands encircled 
 by a radiant aureole, which is surmounted 
 
32 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 by a golden crown, and further surrounded 
 by a framework of stars. The Virgin is 
 emphatically Queen of Heaven, yet in spite 
 of the majesty of her appearance, her face 
 is transparently tender, and the Child 
 nestles down on her shoulder with a 
 caressing gesture of his little hand; how 
 much more likely is this to inspire feelings 
 of love and reverence in the hearts of men 
 than the harsh symbolism of the Byzantine 
 creed ! The Child is just a tender humaVi 
 baby, idealised and glorified by the devout 
 prayers of the artist, who in his simple faith 
 believed his pencU to be inspired by a 
 higher Power than himself, and refused to 
 alter his pictures in any way. 
 
 Of different genius was Fra Filippo 
 Lippi. Like Fra Angelico he was a monk, 
 and painted religious pictures, but lacked 
 the childlike simplicity of heart which 
 shone out through the work of Angelico. 
 In Florence are two of his best -known 
 works ; one in the Academy of Arts, th^ 
 other in the Uffizi Gallery. The former. 
 
PLATE rr 
 
 MADONNA AND CHILD 
 
 BOT'l-ICE[.I,I 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 33 
 
 a picpire of the Coronation of the Virgin, 
 has in the foregroiind two very pretty little 
 children, one of whom gazes with *apt ad- 
 miration at a beautiful girl before whom 
 they kneel, while the other looks straight 
 out of the picture at the spectator. The 
 picture in the Uffizi is a group of the 
 Madonna adoring the Child, supported by 
 two youthful angels; the angel in the 
 foreground wears a sweet expression, but 
 the features of aU seem to be lacking in 
 refinement. 
 
 Lippi's pupil, Botticelli, whose early style 
 was probably influenced by that of his 
 master, may fall under the same censure 
 so far as the Child in the picture we repro- 
 duce is concerned (Plate vi.). This picture, 
 which hangs on a low screen in the 
 National Gallery (No. 275) is perhaps the 
 best known of those ascribed to Botti- 
 celli. It does, indeed, more than justify its 
 popularity. Yet not for the Child do we 
 admire it ; indeed, we can but hope that this ' 
 almost deformed baby was painted by one 
 
34 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 of Botticelli's pupils, and not by the master 
 himself. It wiU not bear comparison with 
 the other figures in the composition, nor 
 with the children in Botticelli's other works, 
 and it is inconceivable that the mind which 
 created and the hand that painted the 
 beautiful Virgin should be identical with 
 those which designed and executed the 
 Child. Its head is monstrously out of pro- 
 portion; its features are ugly; the body 
 is badly and incorrectly drawn, and there 
 is no expression of life. St. John and 
 •the angel attendant, though not exactly 
 children, attract us more. Some awful 
 calamity seems to have fallen on the little 
 group, and these lovely faces are full of 
 sympathy with the Virgin, who seems an 
 embodiment of frozen grief; she has for- 
 gotten the Child she is nursing, and hears 
 only the echo of the words, ' Yea, a sword 
 shall pierce through thine own heart also.' 
 Doubt has been expressed as to the 
 genuineness of this picture, but there are 
 others from which we can judge of Botti- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 35 
 
 celli's treatment of childhood. The ' Holy 
 Family ' in the Louvre, or the ' Mag- 
 nificat' in the Uffizi Gallery, show us 
 what mastery he attained in the portrayal 
 of the child. The baby in the Louvre is 
 a confiding and graceful child nestling 
 lovingly against his mother ; and the half- 
 wistful expression on the face of the little 
 St. John, who stands by, is just what any 
 child, too sweet-tempered for petty jealousy, 
 might wear. In the Uffizi picture, the 
 scene is no longer one of purely domestic 
 bliss. The Child is an older child; his 
 mother is about to write the Magnificat in 
 a book that lies open on her knee, though 
 her grave face belies the joyousness of 
 that poem. Above her head two youth- 
 ful angels hold a crown, to which the up- 
 turned gaze of the Child is directed. One 
 hand rests on his mother's; the other 
 grasps a ripe pomegranate — 
 
 ' Which if cut deep down the middle. 
 Shows a heart within Wood-tinctured, of a reined 
 humanity.' 
 
36 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 A grander picture, but not so sweet a 
 child. 
 
 Some doubt exists with regard to the 
 next picture we reproduce (Plate vii.). The 
 catalogue of the National Gallery assigns 
 it to the Florentine School ; but con- 
 noisseurs have gone further and ascribed 
 it to Pollajuolo, Verrocchio, and Ghirlan- 
 dajo. Of these fifteenth-century painters 
 Verrocchio's name is, by the majority of 
 critics, attached to the picture. The 
 reason for this is, that in Verrocchio's 
 ' Baptism of Christ ' one of the angels is 
 said to have been painted by his pupil, 
 Leonardo da Vinci ; the story further 
 runs that Verrocchio, seeing how greatly 
 Leonardo surpassed him, never took pencil 
 or brush in hand again. However this 
 may be, the angel in the ' Baptism ' bears 
 a marked resemblance to one in this 
 picture — that on the right; so we infer 
 that, if not actually by Verrocchio, it is 
 by one of the students most frequently 
 with him. Furthermore, the Child is the 
 
PLATE Vll 
 
 MADONNA AND CHILD 
 
 UNKNOWN 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 37 
 
 same type, though more refined, as the 
 infants painted by Credi, said to be 
 Verrocchio's favourite pupil. So it seems 
 to be a composite picture, though with 
 marked characteristics of the school of 
 Verrocchio, who probably designed and 
 executed part, leaving his pupils to com- 
 plete it. But whoever the artist, it is 
 undoubtedly a very beautiful picture. 
 The child angels are exceedingly dainty, 
 though somewhat inchned to pose; there 
 is a touch of aflfectation about the hand 
 of the angel on the left. The dimpled 
 boy on the Virgin's lap is a very lovable 
 baby, as he smiles up into his mother's 
 face. In one tiny hand he holds a rasp- 
 berry, while with the other he puts some 
 of the seeds to his lips. The Virgin's face 
 is of childlike simplicity; with the same 
 sweetness which characterises the work 
 of Perugino, she smiles down at the child 
 and clasps her hands in adoration. Other 
 charming studies of children by Verrocchio 
 may be seen in the Louvre, where is 
 
38 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 preserved a sheet of paper with five pen 
 studies on one side and four on the 
 reverse. 
 
 The school of Verrocchio was very- 
 much influenced by the achievements of 
 sculpture ; of which branch of art Dona- 
 tello, and a few years later the Delia 
 Robbia family, were during the fifteenth 
 century the principal exponents. They 
 evidently loved children, for when Dona- 
 tello began to work on the reliefs for the 
 singing gallery in the Duomo at Florence, 
 what subject should he choose for its 
 decoration but the sweetest specimens of 
 happy babyhood : and when Luca della 
 Robbia was entrusted with the task of 
 adorning a similar gallery for the organ 
 he personified the spirit of harmony by 
 groups of older children ; some singing, 
 some dancing. This was Della Robbia's 
 first important work, and it is wonderfully 
 lifelike. The choristers and young maidens 
 are not merely standing with their mouths 
 open in the attitude of song, but they are 
 
PLATE Vlir 
 
 PANEL FROM THE ORGAN GALLERY 
 
 DELLA ROBBIA 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 39 
 
 singing; and so infectious is the joyous 
 melody that some babies seated at the 
 feet of the singers, though too tiny to 
 join in the general harmony, wave their 
 hands in time to the music. The sim- 
 plicity of composition makes this an even 
 more charming work than the gallery by 
 Donatello. Casts of both may be seen 
 at the South Kensington Museum ; but 
 both are unfortunately placed at an incon- 
 venient height on the wall, making a close 
 inspection wellnigh impossible. We re- 
 produce a photograph of that by Luca della 
 Robbia (Plate viii.), and for a specimen 
 of Donatello's work the bronze designed 
 for the high altar of St. Antony's, Padua 
 (Plate IX.). This is very lovely ; represent- 
 ing twelve child angels of exceeding grace, 
 and as natural as we can imagine an angel 
 to be. 
 
 The glazed terra-cotta ware to which 
 his name has been given is most generally 
 known as representing Luca della Robbia's 
 genius. In the South Kensington Museum 
 
40 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 are no less than fifty specimens of his 
 work of this kind ; but a bas-relief in the 
 convent of San Marco at Florence shows 
 his style at its best. Two lovely cherubs 
 gaze down at the Child who lies on a 
 grassy bank shadowed by a group of tall 
 lilies; the Virgin kneels before him, and 
 he holds up a little hand to her with the 
 most delightful air. The lovely medallions 
 of infants at the Foundhng Hospital of 
 the same city are the work of Andrea, 
 Luca's nephew. 
 
 In the same building is an altar-piece by 
 Ghirlandajo, who is chiefly known as the 
 master of Michael Angelo. This altar- 
 piece is said to be his best work ; it depicts 
 ' The Adoration of the Magi,' and shows 
 one of the adoring kings reverently kissing 
 the Child's foot. Two little children are 
 presented by the Baptist and St. John 
 the Evangelist on either side. Similar to 
 this is the ' Adoration ' in the Pitti Palace, 
 where it is curious to notice the introduc- 
 tion of the Florentine costumes of that 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 41 
 
 day ; they accord ill with the sacred scene, 
 and show how much of the spirit which 
 inspired the earlier painters of the Re- 
 naissance was lacking in Ghirlandajo's 
 work. The fact that he took as models 
 famous beauties was also significant. 
 
 Filippino Lippi, son of Fra Filippo 
 Lippi, was only twelve when his father 
 died, and his artistic education was carried 
 on by Botticelli, from whom he acquired 
 his style. One of his loveliest pictures 
 is composed almost entirely of children. 
 The scene is laid in a quiet garden, en- 
 closed by a low balustrade, beyond which 
 is a thick hedge covered with roses in full 
 bloom. Through a row of stiff trees may 
 be seen a ,fanciful landscape. In the 
 midst of this peaceful spot is a group of 
 beautiful child angels kneeling with the 
 Virgin round the infant Christ. The Child 
 lies on the ground amid a shower of roses 
 which falls from the hands of one of the 
 angels. In the foreground kneels the 
 little St. John, who looks out of the 
 
42 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 picture as if calling the spectator's atten- 
 tion to the happy laughing baby. With 
 the joyousness of this scene we may con- 
 trast the picture painted by Filippino for 
 the Rucellai family, but which hangs 
 now in the National Gallery. It is 
 singularly beautiful, and in its type re- 
 minds us somewhat of Botticelli's work. 
 The Virgin's face is sweetly sad, and 
 something of her melancholy is reflected 
 in the Child. On either side is a saint : 
 St. Jerome, an old man with tangled grey 
 hair and beard, is adoring the Child ; 
 St. Dominic, bearing a lily in one hand, is 
 absorbed in a book. Wild beasts retreat 
 from this little group into a mountainous 
 landscape behind. 
 
 Lorenzo di Credi, to whom we have 
 already referred, made no very special 
 mark as an artist ; his pictures are remark- 
 able for elaborate and exact finish, but 
 not for any great individuality. A pupil 
 of Verrocchio, his early works give proof 
 of his acquaintance with Leonardo da 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 43 
 
 Vinci. His masterpiece, a painting of 
 ' The Nativity,' is in the Academy of Arts 
 at Florence. The Virgin and Joseph, to- 
 gether with some shepherds and angels, 
 are grouped round the Child, who hes on 
 the ground, not among grass and flowers, 
 but on a wheat sheaf, symbolic perhaps 
 of the words, ' I am the Bread of Life.' 
 His hand is pointing towards his mouth, 
 a gesture which was much favoured by the 
 early masters as typical of Christ's saying, 
 ' I am the Word.' There are in the 
 National Gallery two pictures by Credi, 
 which any one interested in the hybrid 
 No. 296, reproduced a few pages back, 
 would do well to study. No. 648 re- 
 presents the Virgin adoring the infant 
 Christ, who lies on the ground in front of 
 her. The baby certainly is strikingly like 
 the child in No. 296, but is comparatively 
 clumsy and rather puffy. Credi's babies 
 usually are. There is a monstrously 
 exaggerated imitation of his style in the 
 Dresden Gallery — a 'Holy Family.' 
 
44 THE CH1L.JJ IJN A±tr 
 
 The Virgin has an insipidly pretty face; 
 but the little St. John is staring at the 
 chUd on her knee with his mouth wide 
 open, his face expressive of nothing so 
 much as sheer imbecility. The Child 
 himself has apparently not a bone in his 
 body, and is an ill-shapen bundle of fat, 
 which falls into a series of tucks round 
 him. His feet would never serve him for 
 the purpose of locomotion ; and his hands, 
 particularly the right, which the Virgin 
 holds with an air of tender pride, are 
 more like claws. His face is in accordance 
 with the rest of him and wears a look of 
 blank stupidity. How any one could paint 
 such a picture, and give it a sacred title, 
 passes understanding. It is most probably 
 the work of some Flemish artist in would- 
 be imitation of Credi or Leonardo da 
 Vinci, painted in a later age when the 
 pendulum had swung so far in the direc- 
 tion of Kealism that the painters of the 
 child Christ forgot his divinity entirely, 
 and reproduced merely the features of 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 45 
 
 the prettiest peasant child they could find. 
 Even in the hands of some fifteenth-century 
 artists we feel that the conception of the 
 Virgin and Child was in danger of losing 
 its dignity through an excessively realistic 
 treatment. As their skill in colouring and 
 composition grew, men aimed more at 
 the production of a beautiful picture than 
 the intensifying of the devotional spirit — 
 an inevitable reaction on the part of art, 
 which for so many centuries had been 
 fettered by the restrictions imposed by 
 the Church. 
 
 The production of a beautiful picture 
 was what Leonardo da Vinci had in mind 
 when he painted ' La Vierge aux Rochers ' 
 (Plate Xv), whether he thought about a devo- 
 tional spirit or not. There are two versions 
 of the picture, one in the National Gallery, 
 the other in the Louvre. Discussion re- 
 garding the originality of each has been 
 rife, but with this we need not concern 
 ourselves. There are some points of 
 difference between them, and many critics 
 
46 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 are of opinion that ours is the better 
 picture. In spite of its eccentricities, or 
 rather on account of them, it is very in- 
 teresting. The whole scene is the product 
 of Leonardo's vivid imagination ; nothing 
 like it was ever seen on earth. The rocks 
 are, from a geological point of view, quite 
 impossible, and the incongruity of the 
 flowery carpet on such poor soil as the 
 presence of the rocks would ordinarily indi- 
 cate, strikes us immediately. The figures 
 are characteristic of Leonardo's style. 
 
 The Christ child sits on the ground, 
 supported by an angel ; he raises his hand 
 to bless the little St. John who kneels 
 with joined hands on a rocky ledge in 
 front of him. The Virgin has one hand 
 on the shoulder of the kneeling Child, 
 and the other raised above her Son's 
 head ; her face is illuminated by the slow 
 mysterious smile peculiar to Leonardo. 
 This smile seems indeed to illuminate the 
 whole foreground of the picture ; it is re- 
 flected in the angel's face, and, to a lesser 
 
PLATE X 
 
 THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS 
 
 OA VINCI 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 47 
 
 degree, in those of the children. But, 
 there is a curious unreahty about the 
 figures. They might be ghosts ; the river 
 in the background, seen through the open- 
 ing in the rocks, might be the river of 
 Death. In the Louvre picture the nimbi 
 are absent, and the pretty theory has been 
 set forth that into the valley of the shadow 
 of Death the Virgin has brought the soul 
 of a dead child to receive the blessing of 
 the infant Christ. This appropriate inter- 
 pretation of the picture has been given by 
 D, G. Rossetti in a sonnet : — 
 
 ' Mother, is this the darkness of the end, 
 
 The Shadow of Death ? and is that outer sea 
 Infinite imminent Eternity ? 
 And does the death-pang by man's seed sustained 
 In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend 
 Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he 
 Blesses the dead with his hand silently 
 To his long day which hours no more offend ? 
 Mother of grace, the pass is difficult, 
 
 Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls 
 Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering 
 through. 
 Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols. 
 Whose peace abides in the dark avenue 
 Afuid the bitterness of things occult.' 
 
48 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Leonardo's particular style helped to 
 form that of his disciple, Beltraffio, who 
 was a painter of small originality, but, like 
 Credi, capable of giving great finish to his 
 pictures, which were all on a small scale. 
 No, 728, in the National Gallery, is con- 
 sidered his masterpiece, so we may judge 
 of his capabilities. It represents the Virgin 
 nursing the. Child ; she is seated in front of 
 a green curtain sprinkled with gold orna- 
 ments, and dressed in a blue robe with an 
 under tunic of red. This last is painted 
 with such exquisite finish that it has the 
 appearance of velvet. The Child is a fair 
 curly-haired boy, whose sole garment is 
 a broad band of some patterned material 
 round his body. He has turned from 
 his mother, and looks round as if some- 
 thing outside the picture had attracted 
 his attention. Beltraffio has succeeded in 
 giving us a natural baby, but on the whole 
 it is unattractive. 
 
 Another painter whose early work was 
 influenced by Da Vinci was Fra Barto- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 49 
 
 lommeo. In his later years he made the 
 acquaintance of Raphael, which resulted 
 in an improvement of his style. His 
 'Enthronement of the Virgin' in the 
 Uffizi, and the 'Madonna della Miseri- 
 cordia' in the Church of San Romano at 
 Lucca, show his skiU in painting child 
 angels, who are grouped around the Virgin 
 with wonderful grace. In the latter picture 
 are two or three pretty little children. 
 
 From these charming, conceptions of 
 youth and infancy we must turn to the 
 works of another school which came into 
 prominence about the middle of the fifteenth 
 century — that of Ferrara. In spite of its 
 characteristics, decorativeness and atten- 
 tion to detail, it is not specially attractive. 
 Its earliest representative of any note 
 was Cosimo Tura, who certainly cannot 
 be accused of idealising the children he 
 painted. A specimen of his painting 
 hangs in the National Gallery. 'The 
 Virgin Enthroned ' sits on a high throne, 
 on the steps of which is a choir of angels 
 
50 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 playing various instruments of music. 
 Red and green are the predominating 
 colours forced into rather surprising con- 
 trast. The Virgin's robe is of a peculiar 
 shade of blue ; and both she and the Child 
 lack the charm so noticeable in other 
 pictures of this period. 
 
 Hung close to the painting by Tura is 
 another enthroned Madonna, by Ercole 
 Grandi, whose ideal is far nobler. While 
 Tura's picture is a study in garish con- 
 trasts of colour, Grandi's is full of a quiet 
 harmony. The richly ornamented throne, 
 full of most perfectly finished detail, does 
 not distract, but rests the eye; and the 
 beauty of the mother and child, once 
 Situdied, will not readily be forgotten. The 
 Child stands erect on the Virgin's knee in 
 the traditional attitude of blessing, but 
 there is an utter absence of self- conscious- 
 ness in his pose, which is full of childish 
 dignity. 
 
 Similar to this is Mantegna's conception 
 of the infant Christ. Mantegna, the bright 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 51 
 
 and morning star of the Paduan school, is 
 represented in the National Gallery by a 
 picture of the Madonna and Child, with 
 a saint on either side. In this, as in the 
 'Madonna della Vittoria' of the Louvre, 
 the Child is dignified and stately in pose, 
 but for beauty and grace, Grandi's child 
 Christ is infinitely superior. The influence 
 of sculpture on the Paduan school resulted 
 in ■ harmony of line and composition in 
 Mantegna's pictures ; and in that in the 
 National Gallery may be noticed a wonder- 
 ful colour effect in the draperies, reminding 
 us of nothing so much as shot silk. 
 
 Opposite to Mantegna's 'Madonna and 
 Child,' and in direct contrast, is another, by 
 Crivelli — No. 788 — a large altar-piece in 
 several panels. The colour scheme some- 
 what reminds us of Tura's, but it is very 
 much more subdued, in spite of the gold 
 background ; the exactness of outline is 
 also similar to the work of the Ferrarese 
 artist. The Madonna and Child are both 
 lacking in beauty, yet about the Child 
 
52 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 there is something indescribably appealing. 
 Sitting on his mother's knee, with one 
 little hand tightly clasping her middle 
 finger, with the tired baby head, overcome 
 with sleep, drooping forward over her wrist 
 in the most uncomfortable attitude, it is 
 one of the most pathetic babies in the 
 whole range of Italian art. This repre- 
 sents so well the struggle that went on 
 all through the fifteenth century; the 
 struggle to unite in one the divinity and 
 the humanity of the infant Christ. 
 
 Perhaps of the artists of this period, 
 Bellini was the most successful in this; 
 he has also bequeathed to subsequent ages 
 some very lovely child angels. A choir of 
 cherubs attends the Virgin and Child ; a 
 bevy of older children supports the body 
 of the dead Christ. Among the saints 
 attendant on the enthroned Madonna are 
 small seraphs whose part it is to make 
 music upon the lute or stringed instru- 
 ment. Those in the Frari altar-piece at 
 Venice are wholly absorbed in their oecu- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 53 
 
 pation. One plays a mandolin, to the tones 
 of which he listens with great attention ; 
 the other, a lovely flower-crowned child, 
 pipes joyfully upon a flute. The stately, 
 though perfectly natural Ichild on the 
 Virgin's knee, pays no heed to their music ; 
 quite unlike the child of the San Zaccaria 
 Madonna, whose interest on the attendant 
 violinist is manifest. The melody drawn 
 out by the angel's bow may well be in- 
 spired by the divine happiness of the 
 mother and child. Nothing but an ecstasy 
 of joy seems to radiate from this picture ; 
 and a similar sentiment is breathed in the 
 music of the cherubs at the foot of the 
 Frari Madonna. 
 
 But Bellini saw a vision of the Christ 
 child in another mood, overshadowed by 
 the mystery of pain, as if he read into the 
 future, and felt already the pressure of the 
 crown of thorns upon his baby brow. In 
 this picture, known as the 'Madonna of 
 the Pomegranate ' (Plate xi.), the Virgin, 
 robed in a mantle of blue, holds the child 
 
54 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 on her right arm, while in her left hand is 
 the symbolic pomegranate. The child's 
 right hand is resting on this, while he 
 gazes out of the picture with a wistful 
 expression. Behind is a landscape partly 
 shut off by a green curtain with a narrow 
 red border. The loveliness of the picture 
 baffles description ; perhaps its message is 
 best expressed in the following lines : — 
 
 ' Years pass and change ; mother and child remain. 
 Mother so proudly sad, so sadly wise. 
 With perfect face and wonderful calm eyes. 
 Full of a mute expectancy of pain : 
 Child of whose love the mother seems so fain. 
 Looking far off, as if in other skies 
 He saw the hill of crucifixion rise. 
 And knew the horror and would not refrain.' ^ 
 
 This passing glance at the Italian art of 
 the fifteenth century will have shown us 
 what a marked advance had been made on 
 the Byzantine methods and treatment of 
 the child. It will also have convinced us 
 of the patient and earnest efforts made 
 by the artists of this period to reach a 
 
 1 Love in Idleness (1883). 
 
PLATE XI 
 
 MADONNA AND CHILD 
 
 BELLINI 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 55 
 
 higher ideal. We have traced the gradual 
 growth from the unyielding symbolism of 
 the Byzantine type to a more Christian 
 and human conception of the child, and in 
 our next chapter we shall follow this stiU 
 further. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WE have noticed the development of 
 the imagination in the artists of 
 the earlier years of the Renaissance, and 
 seen how pathetic vsras their struggle 'to 
 unite the attributes of Godhead with the 
 truth of babyhood'; we have seen, too, 
 how rarely they succeeded in the attempt 
 to do this. None, save perhaps Grandi 
 of the school of Ferrara, and Bellini of 
 Venice, produced anything that was a child, 
 real and yet divine. The others failed 
 because they painted either a purely human 
 baby, which, by reason of his traditional 
 attitude and the traditional composition 
 of the picture, was recognised as the 
 child Christ ; or they painted a mere effigy 
 dressed up in gaudy draperies. The latter 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 57 
 
 conception, as we have seen, held its own 
 for long, till it was pushed aside by the 
 study of nature. Men began gradually to 
 realise that childhood, painted in a spirit of 
 reverence, was in itself, without the acces- 
 sories prescribed by ecclesiastical custom, 
 the nearest they could get to the divine. 
 So, having thrown themselves heart and 
 soul into the study of nature, and allow- 
 ing their imagination V certain degree of 
 liberty, they presented, as far as they were 
 able, an ideally beautiful child ; nothing 
 less could adequately express the infant 
 Saviour. Technical difficulties having been 
 to a large extent overcome, the productions 
 of each generation grew proportionately in 
 grace and life, in colour and chiaroscuro. 
 These delights of composition were more 
 to many artists of this time than the ex- 
 pression of devout feeling ; the feeling was 
 there, but entirely subordinated to the 
 technique of the picture. The older artists 
 had made the Virgin and Child the pro- 
 minent figures in their paintings : in the 
 
58 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 pictures of this later time the whole har- 
 mony of the scene had to be considered, 
 and a more perfect balance was secured. 
 
 Luca Signorelli, whose works influenced 
 the mind of Michael Angelo, painted with 
 this idea in view. Like Michael Angelo, 
 he revelled in the representation of strong, 
 powerful men and women, but failed 
 utterly in painting children. They are all 
 curiously ugly ; the only example with any 
 pretensions to the usual charm of baby- 
 hood is in his picture of the ' Circumcision ' 
 in the National Gallery, and even this 
 child has been repainted. In the same 
 room is a ' Coronation of the Virgin,' also 
 by Signorelli. The cloud on which the 
 Virgin stands is composed entirely of little 
 cherub heads. These, in the hands of 
 other sixteenth-century artists, would have 
 been remarkable for daintiness and grace. 
 Signorelli has evidently drawn them all 
 from the same model, and that not chosen 
 with a view to beauty. 
 
 Signorelli's entire devotion to his art is 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 59 
 
 well shown in the following lines by J. A. 
 Symonds from a story told by Vasari : — 
 
 ' Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli, 
 The morning star of Michael Angelo, 
 Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers. 
 Who died. . . . 
 
 Still Luca spoke and groaned not ; but he raised 
 The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair. 
 Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed. . . . 
 Naked and beautiful. . . . 
 Then Luca seized his palette : hour by hour 
 Silence was in the room ; none durst approach : 
 Mom wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly 
 A little maid peeped in and saw the painter 
 Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke. 
 Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas.' ^ 
 
 If we forget Signorelli when we speak 
 of Michael Angelo, it is not possible to 
 mention Raphael without our thoughts 
 drifting to Perugino, to whose influence 
 Raphael owed so much. The return to 
 naturalism did not take effect so soon 
 on the Umbrian school as on those of 
 Florence and Northern Italy. Perugino is 
 still emphatically a religious painter. Two 
 ' Holy Families ' in the Louvre, and an 
 
 ' J. A. Symonds, Renaissance, iii. p. 281. 
 
60 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 altar-piece in the National Gallery, repre- 
 sent his style well. His attitudes are still 
 slightly conventional ; there is a trace 
 of mannerism about his figures; but his 
 paintings are the most sincerely spiritual 
 of his age. All seem steeped in an air 
 of serenity ; repose is the predominating 
 characteristic. His Madonnas are pure and 
 sweet, his children gentle and innocent. 
 Like those of the saintly Fra Angelico, 
 they are idealised morsels of humanity ; it 
 is through the holiness which glows in 
 the face of the Madonna that we catch a 
 glimpse of their divinity. 
 
 Something akin to the work of Perugino 
 is that of Francia, whose pictures are 
 equally devout and reverent in feeling. 
 In the gallery of Munich is a Madonna 
 and Child similar in treatment to one by 
 Filippino Lippi. Separated from a quiet 
 landscape by a rose- covered trellis, the 
 Virgin stands before the Child in an atti- 
 tude of profound humility. The little 
 Christ lies on her outspread mantle bless- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 61 
 
 ing her with his right hand. No crowd of 
 little angels is round them ; even St. John 
 is not one of the group. The Mother and 
 Child are quite alone. The trellis of roses 
 was a favourite introduction on the part of 
 several painters, notably Botticelli. It is 
 possibly an allusion to Dante's speaking of 
 the Virgin as the Rose of Heaven. In the 
 National Gallery are three pictures by 
 Francia, one a large altar-piece representing 
 the Madonna enthroned with St. Anne, 
 and below them St. Paul and St. Sebastian 
 on the left, St. Lawrence and St. Frediano 
 on the right. At the foot of the throne 
 stands the little St. John, bearing his cross 
 of reeds, and a scroll on which are inscribed 
 the words : ' Ecce Agnus Dei.' With the 
 the other hand he points upwards to the 
 child Christ, who is seated on his mother's 
 knee. St. Anne, whose face is particularly 
 beautiful, offers the child a peach, sym- 
 bolic perhaps of the fruits of the Spirit. 
 Nothing could be more sweet than the two 
 children. We feel that they are too good 
 
62 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 for this world, but there is such a wonder- 
 ful delicacy in the whole picture that the 
 sensation is by no means out of place. In 
 another enthroned Madonna by Francia, at 
 Bologna, his native city, the Baptist is a 
 grown man and stands beside the throne, 
 while his place at the foot of it is taken by 
 a charming little angel who is playing on a 
 species of mandolin. 
 
 Francia's friend, Lorenzo Costa, must 
 also come under our notice. The little 
 angels in his pictures are always charming 
 and childlike. In the National GaUery is 
 a picture, evidently an altar-piece, where 
 the angels are particularly lovely. Many 
 artists introduced these little attendant 
 seraphs into their pictures deeming it fitting 
 that the child denizens of heaven should be 
 those selected to sing the praises of their 
 infant King. They either float in the clouds 
 above his head, or hover on the canopy of 
 his throne, sometimes singing in com- 
 panies, sometimes dedicating to his service 
 their skill in playing on instruments of 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 63 
 
 music. They, like Eros of the Greeks, are 
 only immortal types under the likeness 
 of children : child figures, who know no 
 other or more childlike occupation than 
 this ; they sing and play with perfect cer- 
 tainty ; we cannot well imagine them 
 otherwise employed. Yet by no means 
 are the feelings they exhibit all similar. 
 In Mr. Ruskin's words : ' A choir of sing- 
 ing angels by La Robbia or Donatello 
 would be intent on their music, or eagerly 
 rapturous in it, as in temporary exertion : 
 in the little choirs of cherubs by Luini in 
 the Adoration of the Shepherds, in the 
 Cathedral of Como, we even feel, by their 
 dutiful anxiety, that there might be danger 
 of a false note if they were less attentive. 
 But BeUini's angels, even the youngest, 
 sing as calmly as the Fates weave.' ^ 
 
 The cherub inhabitants of the celestial 
 regions were in the hands of fifteenth and 
 sixteenth century artists very differently 
 
 ' Ruskin, On the Relation between Michael Angela and 
 Tintoret, p. 16. 
 
64 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 treated. The idea that wings answered 
 the same purpose for angels as they did for 
 birds was long in taking root. It was 
 manifest that a human being could not 
 stand unsupported in mid-air; and, so must 
 have argued the earlier painters, any being 
 in human form would look unnatural in 
 such a position, even in a picture. There- 
 fore, to give an appearance of reality, 
 when occasion demanded the presence of 
 cherubim and seraphim, a selected few 
 were painted ; the grown-up angels stand- 
 ing on little strips of clouds, and the baby 
 cherubs tucked into larger masses of cloud, 
 with only their heads and shoulders peep- 
 ing out. This was the best that the 
 fifteenth-century artists could do to sug- 
 gest the presence of the hosts of heaven. 
 
 Raphael was the first to make a change. 
 Hanging in the Vatican, close to Peru- 
 gino's 'Resurrection,' which was painted 
 in the old style, is Raphael's ' Assumption 
 of the Virgin.' This was painted in the 
 early days of his career, and we can see in 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 65 
 
 it the influence of the master hand in hand 
 with the pupil's own individuality. Yet 
 Raphael's notion is that the entire com- 
 pany of heaven would be present at any 
 important event, such as this, not only a 
 few selected cherubs; so he paints along 
 the cloud whereon the Virgin sits youthful 
 angels and smaller cherubs, and above their 
 heads the sky is sprinkled with other baby 
 heads, which Hogarth speaks of rather 
 contemptuously as being the most absurd 
 of artistic chimeras. This is much better 
 than the isolated saints and seraphs who 
 attended the Virgin in similar pictures by 
 earlier artists, but were felt by Raphael to 
 be inadequate. 
 
 In another room in the Vatican is a 
 large fresco, entitled the ' Glorification of 
 the Christian Faith,' where he improves on 
 his treatment of angels. ' These persons,' 
 says a modern writer describing this pic- 
 ture, ' have not come down out of heaven 
 to rest on a scaffolding of clouds, but 
 rather, behind the clouds, the heavens have 
 
66 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 opened, and the eternally present — to 
 Raphael — is for the moment made visible. 
 Then as to the clouds themselves, are they 
 indeed clouds? one asks as one continues 
 to gaze, or is what we see rather a mist 
 of angelic movement taking the form of 
 clouds? For here, his cherubs no longer 
 studding a flat sky, merge into and ani- 
 mate the cloud, and are thus at once more 
 real and more ideal. '^ In a later work, 
 the ' Madonna da Foligno,' we notice the 
 further development of this idea. The 
 picture is well known. It was painted in 
 the year 1512 in obedience to an order 
 from Sigismondo Conti of Foligno. A 
 remarkable fall of meteors had taken place 
 in September of the previous year, and 
 Conti desired to place this picture on the 
 high altar of the family chapel as a votive 
 offering to the Virgin, in gratitude for her 
 interposition between himself and a fire- 
 ball. On the ground, in the foreground of 
 
 ' Hope Rea, Tuscan Artists, their Thought and Work, 
 p. 80. 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 67 
 
 the picture, kneel St. John and St. Francis, 
 St. Jerome and the donor ; in the midst of 
 this group stands a stately little cherub 
 holding a tablet. His downy wings are 
 outspread, and his face upturned towards 
 the Virgin and Child, who appear enthroned 
 in masses of cloud. All around them are 
 cherubs whose faces melt indistinctly into 
 the clouds. There are not more than about 
 half a dozen whose features can be traced 
 with absolute distinctness, but the picture 
 suggests the presence of hundreds. Perhaps 
 the most popular figure in the picture is 
 the small angel in the group below, with 
 the tablet in his hands. He reminds us 
 somewhat of Bellini's little songsters, but 
 none of them has half as much dignity as 
 this child. They are all occupied in some 
 way; this little person seems awaiting 
 orders. His face is turned to the Virgin 
 and Child, and his little wings are spread 
 ready to fly on some errand. 
 
 Raphael's child angels alone might afford 
 material for our study, but that they are 
 
68 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 necessarily of the same type. It is in the 
 persons of the infant Christ and the little 
 St. John that we shall more readily trace 
 the development of childhood in art. 
 Raphael's career, short though it was, 
 divided itself into three periods. During 
 the first, when he was under the influence 
 of Perugino, his pictures are very similar 
 in sentiment to those of his master. The 
 Madonna with the Thistlefinch at Berlin is 
 a good example of this. Sweet though the 
 child undoubtedly is, it is little more than 
 that, and is hardly to be compared with 
 some in his later pictures ; that, for in- 
 stance, in the work known as the ' Madonna 
 del Gran' Duca,' which is quite one of 
 the loveliest babies Raphael ever painted. 
 Entirely a baby, there is something in the 
 depths of this child's eyes which prevents 
 our forgetting his divinity; unlike the 
 child of the Casa Tempi Madonna, whose 
 attitude is very like that of the Gran' 
 Duca baby; but with all its dimpled sweet- 
 ness it has not the same enthralling power 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 69 
 
 which compels our gaze. In the Gran' 
 Duca picture, lovely though the Madonna 
 is, we are entirely fascinated by the Child ; 
 the Casa Tempi Mother and Child are 
 inseparable; we cannot think of the one 
 without the other. 
 
 The best-preserved of the pictures painted 
 
 during Raphael's Florentine period, and 
 
 indeed of all his works, is the Ansidei 
 
 Madonna in the National Gallery. It is 
 
 here reproduced (Plate xii.), and is almost 
 
 too well known to need any words of 
 
 description. We learn from the date on 
 
 the border of the Virgin's robe that it was 
 
 painted in the year 1506. Its name is 
 
 derived from the fact that it was painted 
 
 for the family of Filippo di Simoni Ansidei 
 
 as an altar-piece for the chapel of St. 
 
 Nicholas of Bari in the church of San 
 
 Fiorenzo. On the right of the picture 
 
 stands St. Nicholas ; on the left, St. John 
 
 the Baptist. At the feet of the former, 
 
 who is robed in full canonicals, lie three 
 
 balls, the emblem of this particular saint. 
 
70 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 typical of the Trinity, but having reference 
 to three purses of gold which he is said to 
 have thrown into a poor man's window 
 that his daughters might not be portionless. 
 In his right hand, St. Nicholas holds his 
 pastoral staff, and his eyes are intently 
 fixed on a book. St. John, garbed in his 
 raiment of camel's hair, looks upward with 
 an ecstatic expression ; in his left hand he 
 holds a cross of purest crystal, instead of, 
 as was usual, a cross of reeds. On the 
 edge of the canopy above the Virgin's 
 head are the words : ' Salve Mater Christi.' 
 Beyond, in the background, is a city in a 
 landscape. The Virgin, who is presumably 
 teaching the Child to read, holds him on her 
 knee, while with her other hand she points 
 to the page of a book that lies open before 
 her. In this picture we may notice one in- 
 teresting characteristic of Raphael's second 
 period, the girlishness of the Madonna and 
 the likeness between her and the Child. 
 
 About the time that he painted the 
 Ansidei Madonna, or very soon afterwards. 
 
PLATE XI r 
 
 THE "ANSIDEI" MADONNA 
 
 RAPHAEL 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 71 
 
 Raphael began to paint the Holy Family 
 more frequently than the Virgin and Child 
 alone. At first he evidently considered 
 that the third figure, that of the little 
 St. John, upset the harmony of the picture, 
 for in the Terranuova Madonna in the 
 Berlin Museum, he has introduced another 
 child besides the Christ and the Baptist. 
 Why is not certain, unless it is that he 
 was unaccustomed to the arrangement of 
 the picture, and thought an extra figure 
 necessary to balance the composition. Nor 
 do we know who the child is, though sug- 
 gestions of St. John the Evangelist, or 
 St. James the Less, have been made. In 
 course of time, however, Raphael com- 
 pletely mastered the grouping of the Holy 
 Family, the most beautiful examples of 
 which are the Madonna of the Goldfinch 
 and La Belle Jardiniere. 
 
 The motive of the former picture is very 
 lovely. The little Christ stands reading 
 at his mother's knee, when his study is 
 interrupted by the entrance of the little 
 
72 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Si;. John, who, flushed and panting with his 
 chase after the bird, brings in a goldfinch. 
 He holds the poor fluttering creature gently, 
 carefully, for fear of hurting it, and the 
 child Christ turns round to stroke its rufiled 
 feathers with a loving touch. The streaks 
 of crimson among the bird's feathers have 
 been said to render it emblematic of sacri- 
 fice, which is supposed to account for the 
 sadness of the Divine Child as contrasted 
 with the joyful excitement which animates 
 the littleBaptisl;^ Perhaps this is so; though, 
 surely, sufficient explanation is to be found 
 in the thought of how the tender heart of 
 the Christ child would throb with sympathy 
 for the imprisoned and frightened bird. 
 
 La Belle Jardinik-e, which is in the 
 Louvre, was a favourite subject with 
 Raphael; so much so that within two 
 years he painted at least three variations 
 of it. As is suggested by the title, the 
 picture shows the Virgin seated in a land- 
 scape of great beauty, the foreground being 
 carpeted with flowers. In front of her stand s 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 73 
 
 the child Jesus, one hand across the book 
 which lies on her lap. His left foot rests 
 lightly upon hers, and his expression of 
 love has been rarely surpassed by even 
 Raphael himself. Close beside them is 
 the little St. John, who on bended knee 
 worships the Divine Child. 
 
 It has been stated that the most popular 
 of Raphael's pictures, and the most weU- 
 known work of art, is the circular picture 
 known as the Madonna della Sedia. This 
 shows us the Virgin, a pretty ItaUan 
 peasant, holding the Child on her knee 
 tightly to her, while close beside them 
 stands the little St. John. About the origin 
 of the picture a very pretty story is told. 
 
 Many years ago, among the hills near 
 Rome, there lived a hermit who was loved 
 and revered by all who knew him. In the 
 same part of the world lived a wine-dresser 
 who had a beautiful daughter, named Mary. 
 A terrible storm caused the hermit to be 
 in danger of his Ufe, but, thanks to Mary 
 and the branches of an oak-tree in which 
 
74 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 he took refuge, he was saved. His grati- 
 tude was intense, and he prayed to God 
 that the girl and the oak-tree might be 
 distinguished in some way. He did not 
 live to see his prayer granted ; the tree 
 was cut down and converted into casks 
 for Mary's father, the wine-dresser. Some 
 years afterwards, Mary was sitting by one 
 of these casks playing with her children, 
 the elder of whom ran up to her with a 
 stick which he had fashioned into the shape 
 of a cross, when Raphael, who had long 
 been seeking a model, passed. He saw 
 the group, and stopped. Picking up the 
 smooth cover of the wine cask, he sketched 
 thereon the figures of the mother and 
 children, and took it away with him to 
 paint on its surface the Madonna della 
 Sedia. In this way was the blessing 
 invoked by the old hermit fulfilled and 
 both Mary and the oak immortalised. 
 
 The Madonna della Sedia is a good ex- 
 ample of Raphael's third or Roman period. 
 His treatment of children had consider- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 75 
 
 ably altered. The contrast between the 
 Christ and the Baptist was not so dis- 
 tinctly marked, except that Raphael usually 
 painted the little St. .John with dark curls, 
 while the hair of the child Jesus was soft 
 and fair. The Christ was no longer a help- 
 less infant, but a strong and graceful child. 
 This change was probably owing to the 
 influence of Michael Angelo, with whom 
 Raphael came in contact during his stay 
 in Florence. This influence is also trace- 
 able in the cartoons, which are the designs 
 for tapestries in the Sistine Chapel. Michael 
 Angelo's genius lay in the portrayal of 
 powerful figures; his studies in the nude 
 rendering him a master in anatomical draw- 
 ing. In the cartoon of the Beautiful Gate 
 are two children, one running with a pair 
 of doves slung over his shoulder. Mr. 
 Ruskin calls it 'a surgical diagram of a 
 child in a running position,'^ and this is 
 very true. Michael Angelo would at any 
 
 1 On the Eelation between Michael Angela and Tintoret 
 (1872). 
 
76 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 rate have endowed the figure with a certain 
 degree of energy, but in Raphael's imita- 
 tion of his style the child is transformed 
 into a motionless form. His foot is raised 
 in the act of running, but will he ever put 
 it down ? No, he is as immovable as was 
 Lot's wife when she became a piUar of salt. 
 The other boy in the cartoon is more natural. 
 His muscles, as abnormally developed as 
 those of the running child, are more in 
 keeping with his action. He is tugging at 
 his grandfather's girdle in a futile attempt 
 to induce him to move on ; the old man 
 is absorbed in what St. Peter is saying to 
 the cripple, and pays no heed to the child's 
 forcible entreaties ; and forcible they must 
 indeed be, if we may judge from the way 
 the muscles stand out on the child's body. 
 In spite of this exaggeration on Raphael's 
 part, the little boy's action is very charac- 
 teristic of childhood. He does not feel the 
 least interest in St. Peter's remarks, the 
 cripple arouses no sympathy in him; his 
 only wish is to move on, and this he im- 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 77 
 
 patiently intimates to the old man, whose 
 whole attention is fixed on the apostle's 
 words. In another cartoon, that of the 
 Sacrifice at Lystra, two boys at the altar 
 are solely concerned with their own affairs, 
 and take no interest in the ceremony what- 
 ever. One is wholly absorbed in the play- 
 ing of his > pipe; the other has turned to 
 stare at a ram which is just being brought 
 in for sacrifice. 
 
 Even in his early pictures of the 
 Madonna and Child, Raphael brings this 
 characteristic to the fore. Whenever he 
 depicts the Madonna reading in a book, 
 the Child is usually shown endeavouring 
 to distract her attention. A variation of 
 this same trait may be observed in the 
 Madonna del Passeggio, in the Bridge- 
 water Gallery. This picture, which, how- 
 ever, may be unauthentic, shows the 
 meeting of the Virgin and Child with the 
 little St. John. The Virgin tries to hold 
 the Child back, but he presses forward to 
 embrace his little playfellow. 
 
78 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Of the greatest of Raphael's pictures, 
 perhaps the most wonderful picture in 
 the world, the Sistine Madonna, it were 
 almost better not to speak. It conveys its 
 own wonderful message in a silence which 
 is eloquent, and which many words of de- 
 scription would only mar. It is a vision 
 which the genius of Raphael has trans- 
 ferred to canvas — a vision of God and the 
 Mother of God. Around them an aureole 
 of cherubs melts into heavenly radiance ; 
 before them kneel St. Sixtus and St. Bar- 
 bara, while at the base of the picture two 
 little angels look upwards in wondering 
 adoration (Plate xiii. ). It is said that the 
 idea of these cherubs was suggested to 
 Raphael by the presence of two little boys 
 who used to climb up to one of the win- 
 dows of his studio and gaze at him, open- 
 mouthed and astonished, as he worked. 
 
 On Raphael's treatment of childhood a 
 good deal more might be said, but these 
 inadequate words must suifice. The beauty 
 of the child soul is apparent through all his 
 
PLATE Xni 
 
 MADONNA DI SAN SISTO 
 
 RAPHAEL 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 79 
 
 work, and the intense joy in life which 
 characterises many of his children makes 
 him a master in this branch of art. 
 
 Another artist whose sympathy with 
 childhood has produced some charming 
 work is Luini of Milan. Some studies in 
 the Ambrosiana in that city show well 
 how he loved the soft curves of babyhood, 
 and one of his most noted pictures is the 
 ' Madonna of the Rose Trellis.' In this we 
 are reminded of Da Vinci's types of the 
 Virgin and Child, but there is less affecta- 
 tion about this Virgin of Luini. She is 
 simply dressed in the garb of a poor 
 woman, and the rather cunning smile of 
 Leonardo's Virgin has given place to one 
 of tender pride in the beautiful child on 
 her knee. He leans across to grasp a 
 columbine which grows in a vase near him, 
 and holds the stalk of the flower in his 
 right hand. Behind the mother and child 
 is a trellis on which twine red and white 
 roses, whence the picture derives its name. 
 This picture is in the Brera, where are also 
 
80 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 preserved some fragments of fresco decora- 
 tion from the Villa Felucca near Monza. 
 A fragment is also in the Wallace Collec- 
 tion, representing a ' child-genius ' holding 
 up some grapes, a very daintyXpiece of 
 work showing how the tide was beginning 
 to turn in favour of classical subjects in- 
 stead of purely religious ones. 
 
 Bertucci of Faenza is described by Dr. 
 Richter as * a hybrid artist who borrowed 
 indiscriminately from the works of the 
 Umbrian Masters and those of Lorenzo 
 Costa.' It is true Bertucci is not a great 
 artist, indeed he can hardly be called well 
 known, but if we may judge from the 
 spedmen of his painting here reproduced, 
 he did his borrowing with more discrimi- 
 nation than Dr. Richter gives him credit 
 for. He has compiled a very pretty pic- 
 ture (Plate XIV.), and though it is certainly 
 reminiscent of Costa's style, we need 
 admire it none the less. The Virgin, 
 bearing in her left hand a lily, supports 
 witji the right the Child, who stands on her 
 
PLATE XIV 
 
 THE GLORIFICATION OF Til?: VIRGIN 
 
 BFRTUCCI 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 81 
 
 knee with one hand round her neck. She 
 sits on a bank of cloud, her feet rest on 
 another, while from below the hem of her 
 robe peep tiny cherubs. Below, seated on 
 a low wall which surrounds a marble pave- 
 ment, are two child angels. The one on 
 the left, with his knees crossed, his up- 
 turned face smiling in happy love, has just 
 interrupted his music on a rebec; the other 
 on the right is wholly absorbed in the 
 sound which he extracts from a long pipe. 
 On the cloud which forms the throne are 
 two cherubs who hold long lighted tapers ; 
 while from the clouds above lean tiny 
 beings who hold a crown over the Virgin's 
 head. Bertucci had not. the perception 
 of Raphael in his visions of the heavenly 
 host : his company of cherubim does not 
 melt into radiant mists, but the charm of 
 the little children making melody to the 
 honour and praise of their child King is 
 very real. 
 
 The divinity of Raphael's little Christ 
 comes sharply to our minds when we look 
 
82 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 at the Holy Family by Andrea del Sarto 
 (Plate XV.). The only tokens by which 
 we recognise this work as representing a 
 sacred scene are the cross and scroll 
 flung on the ground at the feet of their 
 little owner, St. John. Considered in the 
 light of a purely religious picture, it is 
 weighed in the balances and found want- 
 ing; as a simple domestic scene, it is 
 wholly delightful. Here is a lovely little 
 group ; two mothers, one with the weight 
 of many years upon her, the other young 
 and beautiful, paying the most earnest 
 attention to her companion's words, and 
 their respective children, two beautiful 
 boys, full of life and energy and animated 
 by a reckless joy. What is there to dis- 
 tinguish these children from any other pair 
 of equally lovely little ones? Nothing 
 whatever. They are simply strong, happy, 
 overflowingly happy, human babies. Be- 
 yond the joy of the moment they have no 
 thought ; that they accept unquestioningly. 
 No hint is there of oncoming clouds. The 
 
PLATJi XV 
 
 THE HOLY FAMILY 
 
 DEL SARTO 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 83 
 
 cross of reeds lies unheeded on the ground; 
 it can cast no shadow on this childish 
 merriment. 
 
 The ideal child of Michael Angelo is also 
 a strong, healthful boy; this is shown in 
 his unfinished picture of the Holy Family 
 (National Gallery, No. 10). All the figures 
 are powerful in physique and statuesque in 
 attitude. The Virgin is reading in a book, 
 and her face is grave and sad. The child 
 Christ lays his hand on the volume and 
 tries to take it away, but his mother draws 
 it gently back. There is abundance of life 
 in the composition, but as a presentment 
 of childhood it is not pleasing. Michael 
 Angelo's genius failed entirely in the 
 painting of children. 
 
 For daintiness and grace few can surpass 
 Correggio. The lovely little picture of the 
 'Madonna deUa Cesta' is a fair specimen 
 of his style (Plate xvi.). Its title is as in- 
 appropriate as that of Del Sarto's picture ; 
 but considered merely as an incident in 
 domestic life, it could hardly be more 
 
84 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 beautiful. Painted on wood, it has all the 
 delicacy of a miniature on ivory, and is 
 exquisite in colour and composition. In 
 the background is Joseph working with a 
 plane. The Virgin, simply and gracefully 
 clothed, sits with the child on her knee 
 trying to dress him. She has just suc- 
 ceeded in putting one little arm into the 
 sleeve of his coat, when the child's atten- 
 tion is caught by something to the left of 
 the picture, though outside its range, and 
 he stretches out his hand to reach it. His 
 whole attitude betokens the unquenchable 
 vitality of a healthy, happy child, and the 
 Virgin's proud smile is more than justified 
 by the loveliness of this golden-haired boy. 
 But the picture would have lost nothing in 
 interest if the artist had given it another 
 name; if it is, as we may suppose, a portrait 
 of his own wife and child, their memory 
 would have been immortalised, and Cor- 
 reggio saved the censure of many critics 
 who deplore the lack of reverence in this 
 treatment of a sacred subject. 
 

 
 
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 CORREGGIO 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 85 
 
 At Chatsworth is a lovely study of chil- 
 dren in red chalk, little round -limbed 
 creatures playing with all the unconscious 
 grace of babyhood, just as we might 
 imagine Cupid frolicking after the reading- 
 lesson which, in one of Correggio's master- 
 pieces. Mercury is attempting to give him. 
 This latter picture, hanging next to the 
 'Madonna della Cesta' in the National Gal- 
 lery, is very true to life. The child Cupid's 
 attitude suggests utter non-comprehension 
 of what the messenger of the gods is trying 
 to teach him ; for ' Love learns through 
 the heart and not through the head.' His 
 attention has been caught for an instant 
 by the strange marks on the paper, and he 
 looks at them wonderingly, thinking to 
 find therein a new means of amusement ; 
 failing this, his intention is to scamper off 
 in search of fresh mischief. The games of 
 the lovely children in the decoration of the 
 Convent of San Paolo at Parma are more 
 to Master Cupid's taste than study. These 
 enchanting little beings, some of them 
 
86 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 perfect miracles of beauty, dancing and 
 playing in roundels on the ceiling, are 
 among the loveliest specimens of the 
 Cupid type. They are much more real 
 than Cupid, however ; though some of 
 them are, like him, armed with bow and 
 arrows, we can more readily believe^ them 
 human children. Some are unoccupied ; 
 others have horns which they blow with 
 all the zest of the modern child who ill- 
 treats a penny whistle or tin trumpet ; the 
 most fascinating of all being the youngest 
 of this troop of happy babies, a dear little 
 person with his dimpled arms flung round 
 the neck of a big white deerhound, who, 
 after the manner of his kind, seems rather 
 to enjoy than resent the action. 
 
 From mythological subjects to sacred 
 scenes seems a long stride, but such is the 
 adaptability of these little beings that they 
 can assume fluffy wings and sing and fly 
 among the clouds of heaven without it 
 striking us as incongruous. In spite of the 
 different significance, there is a distinct 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 87 
 
 family likeness between Cupid and a 
 cherub; the joyous little creatures which 
 hover about the Madonna and Child are 
 closely akin to the little pagan god, the 
 difference lying in the environment. As 
 the natural accessories in Correggio's re- 
 ligious pictures, we find scores of tiny 
 angels, either melting into infinite distance 
 as in some of Raphael's masterpieces, or 
 clearly defined, and playing some fixed 
 part in the scene, each and all very lovely, 
 an ideal of happy innocence. 
 
 As a master of light and shade we see 
 Correggio at his best in 'La Notte' (the 
 Holy Night) in the Dresden Gallery. 
 The scene is the interior of a stable ; 
 through the open door we catch a glimpse 
 of the distant hUls silhouetted against the 
 first silver streaks of the oncoming dawn. 
 A tangle of heavenly beings on a cloud 
 have floated in, and hang in mid-air above 
 the group of astonished shepherds who have 
 left their flocks to see the wonder God 
 has wrought. The otherwise gloomy stable 
 
88 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 is pervaded by an unearthly radiance which 
 emanates from the Holy Child, illumining 
 faintly the figures of Joseph and the ass, 
 and dazzling the eyes of a peasant girl who 
 has stolen in with the shepherds. The 
 Virgin, with the little downy head pillowed 
 on her arm, looks down in wonder on the 
 lovely child. But with the breaking of 
 the day, the worshipping peasants go one 
 by one to their daily tasks, and the vision 
 of celestial beings fades : the stable is once 
 more deserted save for the mother and 
 child. This is the scene which Correggio 
 shows us in a picture in the Uffizi Gallery. 
 Upon the ground kneels the Virgin. The 
 edge of her mantle is spread on a low step 
 in front of her, and on it lies the child. 
 Here the mother, the first overpowering 
 joy past, pours out her soul in adoration 
 of the tiny babe, while he lifts his little 
 hands towards her. A more simple scene 
 could hardly be, but it is full of a divine 
 power which makes it one of Correggio's 
 most beautiful pictures. 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 89 
 
 To the names of Raphael and Correggio 
 another must he added, that of Titian. In 
 the sixteenth century these three, and these 
 three alone, were great as far as the paint- 
 ing of childhood was concerned. Each 
 grasped the characteristics of childhood in 
 a way which the other artists of their time 
 never equalled. With Raphael they were 
 embodied in the Divine Child ; with Cor- 
 reggio they crystallised into a human baby, 
 whether he was called the Christ child or 
 Cupid. Titian's genius took a wider range, 
 and from the child Christ, the cherubs of 
 the Assumption to the dignity of the little 
 lady of the Strozzi famijy, with her lovely 
 jewels and no less lovely face — all are 
 painted with equal success. 
 
 His conception of the infant Christ is 
 shown in two pictures in the National 
 Gallery. One shows the Holy Family 
 resting on the way to Egypt. They have 
 been met by St. Catherine, who kisses the 
 laughing, crowing baby, while a beautiful 
 little St. John presents flowers to the Virgin. 
 
90 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 The other picture shows the worship of a 
 humble shepherd. He kneels before the 
 child, who, half frightened at the strange 
 new face, turns for protection to his mother. 
 Encouraged, however, by her smile, he 
 looks at the worshipper with timid in- 
 terest, and a cautious curiosity may be 
 read in the little face. This is a true 
 picture of babyhood. 
 
 Another use made by Titian of the child 
 form is in the famous 'Assumption' at 
 Venice (Plate xvii.). There the Virgin 
 ascends to heaven accompanied by myriads 
 of small celestial beings, who fling them- 
 selves about among the downy masses of 
 cloud with all the abandonment of infant 
 joy. The clouds are literally alive with 
 them. The distinct sprawling, jumping, 
 laughing babies in the foreground, are 
 transformed by distance into little cloud- 
 phantoms. Below is a cloud of worshippers 
 gazing in adoration while the Virgin mounts 
 steadily heavenwards with uplifted hands, 
 and the little cherubs sing their paeans 
 
PLATE XVIl 
 
 THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN' 
 
 TITIAN 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 91 
 
 of joy. From beneath the robe of the 
 Almighty, who stretches forth His hand in 
 blessing, other cherubs greet their joyous 
 companions. These are triumphant chil- 
 dren of heaven. 
 
 If we would see yet another aspect of 
 childhood from Titian's brush, the National 
 Gallery contains the picture called 'Bacchus 
 and Ariadne' : but Bacchus on his car drawn 
 by leopards, and Ariadne as she turns in 
 flight, are almost unnoticed after the first 
 glance, A child in the foreground attracts 
 and holds fast our attention. Absolutely 
 free from self- consciousness, he marches 
 along in the train of the wine-god, his 
 head thrown back in the most exquisite 
 and triumphant delight ; just as a child 
 of to-day seeing a band of soldiers tramp 
 along the street will temporarily join the 
 ranks and march beside them, making 
 believe, in the exuberance of his own 
 imagination, to be a red-coat himself. 
 So does this flower - crowned baby, and 
 we feel an answering thrill as the little 
 
92 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 face looks saucily from the canvas, invit- 
 ing us to share in the joy which impels 
 its dancing steps. 
 
 Round about Titian cluster a host of 
 other names, amongst them Tintoretto and 
 Veronese ; but none of these artists found 
 out anything new to tell the world about 
 childhood. Their children are essentially 
 the same as those of other artists, slightly 
 modified according to the temperament of 
 the painter and the nature of his environ- 
 ment. Tintoretto painted cherubs and the 
 Christ child, some child figures in the 
 frescoes of the Scuola di San Rocco, and on 
 the ceiling some children's heads. Of these 
 Mr. Ruskin says, ' it is much to be regretted 
 they should be thus lost in filling small vacui- 
 ties of the ceiling.'^ Veronese has given 
 us some very natural children in his picture 
 of ' The Supper at Emmaus ' in the Louvre, 
 which picture seems to be mainly portraits 
 of himself, his wife, and his family. Two 
 pretty little girls are playing with a dog 
 
 1 Stones of Venice, iii. 351 (1868). 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 93 
 
 in front of the table, and the rest of the 
 family, including three other children, is 
 grouped near them. 
 
 So the names of Raphael, Correggio, and 
 Titian stand for the masters in the paint- 
 ing of childhood during the sixteenth 
 century; nay, more than that, among all 
 their predecessors in Italian art, they alone 
 are worthy to wear the laurel wreath which 
 is the victor's due. The cold classicism of 
 Greece, the borrowed art of Rome, pro- 
 duced no children ; it remained for the 
 live coal of Christianity to kindle the pure 
 flame which illumined before men's eyes the 
 beauty of childhood, in the persons of the 
 little Christ and St. John. In the hands 
 of Raphael was the truest and most beauti- 
 ful conception reached. But men could 
 not for long paint only their idea of the 
 Holy Child. The child form began to be 
 studied, and in this study it flashed across 
 the minds of a few enlightened artists that 
 not only was it a very beautiful form, but 
 the spirit within it was equally so, and 
 
94 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 full of innumerable possibilities in all its 
 fanciful wayward moods, its tender loving 
 ways, its inconsequent joys and griefs. 
 With the art of Correggio and Titian the 
 climax, so far as it concerned the ItaUan 
 school, was reached. After this the child 
 was treated with less respect. The sugared 
 daintiness of Carlo Dolci is as little to our 
 taste as the vulgarity of some artists of 
 the Roman and Neapolitan schools. What 
 degradation the conception of childhood 
 suffered is well expressed in a picture by 
 Baroccio.^ The theme of this*, which is a 
 group of the Holy Family, is the torment- 
 ing of an unfortunate bird by a cat. This 
 ' intellectual treat ' seems to be greatly en- 
 joyed by all the figures in the group, even 
 the little Christ himself. Contrast with 
 this idea that of Raphael's Madonna of 
 the Goldfinch, which was painted barely 
 a century earlier. Where is the reverence 
 with which Raphael painted the child 
 Jesus ? The tenderness of the child's heart 
 
 1 ' Our Lady of the Cat.' National Gallery, No. 29. 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 95 
 
 has hardened into deliberate cruelty. For 
 whether it is the Christ child or any other 
 child whom Baroccio thus shows as taking 
 delight in the torture of a fellow-creature 
 is not the point. If for the Holy Child 
 we were to substitute the humblest peasant 
 boy, would not the degradation of child- 
 hood be just the same ? 
 
 Yet let us not hastily award the prize 
 to Raphael, to Correggio, or to Titian. 
 The tournament is not over ; 'tis but mid- 
 day. There are others waiting to enter the 
 lists ; hardy Northerners from Germany and 
 Holland, courtly Spaniards and French- 
 men, and from Britain too, men of renown. 
 Let us, therefore, withhold our judgment. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FROM the artists of Italy with their 
 ideal conceptions of childhood, we^ 
 turn to look at an altogether different style 
 of art. The cloudy skies and more 
 rigorous climate of the countries north of 
 the Alps ; the different religious spirit there 
 -prevailing ; the different modes of thought 
 and living — all these combine to make the 
 child in German and Dutch art a great 
 contrast to the child of the ItaUan Re- 
 naissance. Instead of the flighty little 
 Cupids, the dainty cherubs, the ideally 
 beautiful Holy Children of Italian Art, we 
 find little German and Dutch children 
 depicted with the utmost truth and 
 candour and not in the least idealised. 
 Yet incipient angels are not entirely 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 97 
 
 absent from German art. The art of 
 Germany was at first avowedly religious, 
 and the work of Albrecht Durer, the 
 earliest painter of note, was more in 
 sympathy with the artistic idealism of 
 Italy than was that of his successors. In 
 some of his engravings we may see a 
 plentiful supply of cherubs and similar 
 baby forms. Some of them are very 
 quaint, as little like the Italian putti as 
 these in many instances were like real 
 babies. A cloudlet of them hovers above 
 the fugitive family on the road to Egypt ; 
 and once there, when Joseph takes up his 
 former trade of a carpenter and Mary sits 
 beside the cradle of her sleeping Son, these 
 same cherubs perform all sorts of antics, 
 and play all manner of absurd games with 
 the chips and shavings that fly from 
 Joseph's block of wood. One of them is 
 playing with a * windmill,' a toy dear to 
 the hearts of modern babies ; and he holds 
 by the hand another tiny angel, whom he 
 is literally dragging along to join his 
 
98 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 comrades, Another is busy with a minia- 
 ture hay-fork. These quaint little beings 
 add a great deal of charm to the engrav- 
 ing ; though, while they are clearly meant 
 to represent celestial attendants, we may 
 find it difficult to realise they are other 
 than perfectly natural human children, 
 
 Diirer's child Christ differs little in 
 form from these romping cherubs. Only 
 once did Diirer allow himself to idealise 
 the divine Child, and that was in 
 a picture of the Virgin as Queen of 
 Heaven standing on the crescent moon 
 with the child in her arms ; but we cannot 
 pretend that the result reaches our 
 standard of infant grace. The specimen 
 is just an average one of German baby- 
 hood, which as represented in art i? often 
 unnecessarily fat and rarely pretty. 
 
 The presence of a child in one of Diirer's 
 most famous prints, the ' Melencalia,' is 
 curious. The subject is a woman, clothed 
 in sombre raiment, surrounded by scien- 
 tific instruments and every facility for 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 99 
 
 study and research, yet wrapped in the 
 deepest and most impenetrable melancholy. 
 By her side is seated a winged child — does 
 it represent the human soul ? ' There the 
 child sits on the grindstone of necessity, 
 subject to law, but unconscious of its 
 workings, while the more fully grown soul, 
 after ceaseless strivings with nature, falls 
 into that melancholy, or Weltschmerz, as 
 the Germans call it, that at some time 
 overclouds all great minds.' ^ 
 
 As Diirer's work is unique, so are his 
 little German cherubs. The other great 
 master of his time, Holbein, went further 
 afield for his ideas on the subject of child- 
 hood, and painted portraits, by which he 
 has made us familiar with some English 
 children of that day, notably Prince 
 Edward, afterwards Edward vi., whom 
 Holbein seems to have painted several 
 times. In the Royal Gallery at Hanover 
 is a portrait of this child at the age of 
 
 > Life o/Albrecht Diirer. M. M. Heaton. London, 1881, 
 p. 207. 
 
100 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 two. He is splendidly dressed in red 
 velvet and gold lace, and from out of the 
 closely fitting bonnet of white, which is 
 surrounded by a red velvet cap adorned 
 with a white plume, looks the round baby 
 face: rather a solemn little face, as if at 
 this early age he had already found his 
 high rank more of a burden than a privilege. 
 This somewhat serious expression deepened 
 into more definite sadness as the child 
 grew older, as we may see fi-om a chalk 
 drawing at Windsor and a later portrait in 
 the South Kensington Museum. But it 
 seems also to have been the peculiar 
 characteristic of all Holbein's child por- 
 traits. Two miniatures in the library at 
 Windsor Castle, pictures of the little sons 
 of the Duke of Suffolk, are invested with a 
 most pathetic expression; and Holbein's 
 portrait of his own wife and children, 
 though one of the prettiest of family 
 groups, is extraordinarily mournful The 
 mother is sad ; the little boy looks as if 
 tears were very near the surface ; even the 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 101 
 
 red-haired baby wears a look of the deep- 
 est dejection. 
 
 Perhaps Holbein's most celebrated 
 picture, and certainly one of the most 
 beautiful from his brush, is that known as 
 the Meyer Madonna ; which is here repro- 
 duced (Plate XVIII.). It was painted at the 
 order of one Jacob Meyer, a Burgomaster 
 at Basle ; and intended to be set up over an 
 altar in a chapel. It represents the Virgin 
 and Child in the midst of the donor's family. 
 At her right kneels the Burgomaster, his 
 hands clasped, his face upturned to the 
 child in the Virgin's arms. In front of 
 him is his son, whose hands rest on the 
 shoulders of a beautiful baby boy. Upon 
 this lovely child is fixed the attentive gaze 
 of Meyer's daughter Anna, who kneels 
 opposite. Behind her kneel two women 
 in nun-like robes with white head-dresses ; 
 one, Meyer's first wife, who died fifteen 
 years before the picture was painted, and 
 whose features Holbein never saw; the 
 other Anna's mother. In the centre of 
 
102 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 this group, under a shell-shaped canopy, 
 stands the majestic figure of the Virgin, 
 crowned, and with long fair hair floating 
 over her shoulders. The child in her arms 
 looks weak and ill; he lies back against 
 her shoulder in a weary attitude, and 
 stretches out his left hand towards the 
 group of worshippers. Various theories 
 have been advanced in explanation of this. 
 The fact that it is the child's left hand 
 which is outstretched seems to do away 
 with the idea of benediction; while the 
 extraordinary likeness between him and 
 the child on the ground, who, it will be 
 noticed, is looking at his own outstretched 
 arm, has given rise to the notion that the 
 child in the Virgin's arms is not the Divine 
 child, but the Bu%omaster's baby son, 
 whom the Virgin has taken up to heal of 
 some defect in the arm, while the lower 
 part of the picture shows him restored to 
 health. That there are signs of suffering 
 in the face of the child in the Virgin's 
 arms is manifest. Another very beautiful 
 
PLATE XV/II 
 
 THE MEYER MADONNA 
 
 HOLBEIN 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 103 
 
 interpretation has been given which would 
 account for this. 'A father and mother 
 have prayed to the Virgin for the hfe of 
 their sick child. She appears to them, her 
 own Christ in her arms. She puts down 
 her Christ beside them — takes their child 
 into her arms instead. It lies down upon 
 her bosom, and stretches its hand to its 
 father and mother saying farewell,' ^ In 
 short, we may read what meaning we will 
 into the picture, which lends itself so well 
 to these beautiful theories that it is 
 almost impossible to prove them wrong. 
 The original picture is in the Grand Ducal 
 Palace at Darmstadt ; while a copy, so 
 excellent that it passed for years as the 
 original, is in the Dresden Gallery. 
 
 So much then for the child in German 
 art, properly so called. It is mainly to 
 Dutch and Flemish artists that we are 
 indebted for many delightful domestic 
 scenes in which the child plays an active 
 part. The Dutch saw in childhood an 
 
 ^ Ruskin, On the Old Boad, i. p. 236. 
 
104 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 infinite amount of character; children are 
 little individuals who have their own 
 particular business to attend to, and it is 
 wholly absorbing to them, though poor 
 foolish grown-up people may fail to see in 
 what its fascination lies. There are some 
 quaint little mortals in a picture by Pieter 
 Brueghel, called the 'Alchemist.' The 
 scene is the interior of a laboratory where 
 work is in full swing. The three children, 
 however, pay not the sUghte'st attention to 
 anything going on around them ; they are 
 occupied with a game of their own. Two 
 of them have clambered up into a cup- 
 board in the wall. The head of one is 
 almost completely covered by what looks 
 suspiciously like an inverted cauldron or 
 saucepan ; but from the child's air of pride 
 it might be a helmet and he a knight in 
 chain armour. He stretches out a hand to 
 help a smaller child, who stands on a low 
 stool below with upstretched arms and an 
 imploring little face, evidently in fear that 
 it will be left entirely out of the fun. 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 105 
 
 Through the open window we catch a 
 glimpse of a man with a child hanging on 
 to each hand walking across the village 
 green to a building marked ' Hospital.' 
 Perhaps they have been getting into mis- 
 chief and paid the price by a cut or 
 burnt finger. 
 
 The conception of these children is in 
 advance of the technique. Is it too much 
 to say of a far greater artist, Peter Paul 
 Rubens, that his technical skUl is superior 
 to his conception of childhood ? 
 
 Rubens has been called the king of child 
 painters. Let us not hastily depose him ; 
 but surely a worthier has been found to 
 reign supreme in this branch of art. As a 
 master in the art of painting the child 
 form, Rubens owes allegiance to none. 
 We look at the wreath of romping boys in 
 the Gallery at Munich, healthy-looking 
 naked babes in the happiest of moods, and 
 see how inimitably perfect and natural are 
 their several attitudes, how full of glee are 
 the faces beneath the halos of tumbled 
 
106 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 curls ; but does their joy in life awaken an 
 answering thrill in us? We can rejoice 
 with the little child faun in Titian's 
 'Bacchus and Ariadne,' but we are un- 
 moved at the sight of these children's play. 
 With aU Rubens' genius, he missed the 
 essence of childhood. He could and did 
 inspire the pictured children with grace 
 and life, he could endow them with every 
 bodily charm, but he saw no further than 
 the outer shell ; their beauty is only skin 
 deep. The child-soul is not there; their 
 gleeful faces are moved only with the ex- 
 pression of animal spirits. When the frolic 
 is over they will eat and sleep, will eat and 
 play again ; and this they will do till the 
 end of their days. You cannot imagine 
 Rubens' children doing anything else; in 
 company with Eros of the Greeks, they 
 will never grow up. 
 
 Rubens frequently used his own children 
 as models for his cupids and cherubs ; and 
 his portraits of them in everyday life. sug- 
 gest very forcibly these little amorini with 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 107 
 
 the simple addition of clothes. In the 
 Louvre is a picture of his wife, Helena 
 Fourment, with the two little boys. She 
 sits with her arms clasped round the elder 
 child, who stands close beside her; while 
 at her knee stands the younger boy, 
 Nicholas, a chubby, fair-haired child. We 
 can distinctly trace the features of these 
 two children in many of Rubens' pictures ; 
 sometimes they pose as cupids, sometimes 
 as little angels, sometimes as the Christ- 
 child and St. John. But the most pleasing 
 child-picture Rubens painted is simply a 
 portrait of the little Nicholas holding in 
 one fat hand the string to which is attached 
 a small green parrot. The boy's face is a 
 study; he is overjoyed at the possession 
 of the bird, yet half alarmed at the flutter- 
 ing efforts it makes to escape. Something 
 has evidently startled the parrot, for little 
 Nicholas has raised his other hand with a 
 warning gesture. The child is very pretty, 
 with curling fair hair ; a natural, attractive 
 baby boy — almost the only attractive child 
 
108 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 from Rubens' brush. For how can we 
 expect Rubens to paint for us the true 
 beauty of childhood who in all his pictures 
 loved to dwell on the animal side of human 
 nature, and failed in most cases to endow 
 his creations with aught beside the lust of 
 the eyes and the pride of life. 
 
 Opposed to his work in every respect was 
 that of his pupil, Anthony Van Dyck. 
 While Rubens revelled in painting the 
 drunken orgies of Bacchus and Silenus, 
 Van Dyck's pencil was employed in the 
 portraiture of high-born and noble men ; 
 while Rubens modelled the forms of rather 
 coarse and vulgar children, Van Dyck set 
 forth on his canvas the features of little 
 aristocrats. 
 
 The children of Charles i. form the sub- 
 ject for Van Dyck's most famous child 
 picture. He painted them three times. 
 The first group, painted in 1635, contains 
 the three eldest children, Charles, after- 
 wards King ; Mary, who married William 
 of Orange; and James, Duke of York — 
 
PLATE XIX 
 
 THIO CHILUKKX OF CUARl.ES I 
 
 \'A\ nvcK 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 109 
 
 the latter being ,a baby of two. This pic- 
 ture, which we reproduce (Plate xix.). is 
 in the Turin Gallery. To the left stands 
 Prince Charlesy dressed in a long em- 
 broidered silk frock, with a deep falling 
 collar edged with lace. His hand rests on 
 the head of a big collie dog who is close 
 beside him, and is quite one of the most 
 interesting figures in the picture. To- 
 wards the right stands the stately little 
 figure of Princess Mary. Her dress is open 
 at the throat, round which she wears a 
 necklace of beautiful pearls. Her hair is 
 not, like her brother's, confined by a cap, 
 but falls in ; ringlets round her face. 
 Behind her, stretching to the left of the 
 picture, is a curtain, which leaves visible 
 behind the head of the baby, James, a 
 peep of the sky and a rose-bush in full 
 bloom. A branch of its lovely blossoms 
 lies at the feet of Princess Mary. The 
 tiny prince, James, stands on a step in 
 stately draperies of silk which trail on the 
 ground behind him. In his hands he holds 
 
110 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 an apple. His hair is almost entirely 
 hidden by a closely fitting cap. Regal he 
 does indeed look. It would seem that the 
 painter had interrupted the children in a 
 game, in which the baby played the part 
 of king and received in this dignified 
 fashion the homage offered by his brother 
 and sister and the big dog. None of the 
 party look as if they were posed for the 
 picture ;' the artist has caught them at the 
 happy moment, when they are surprised 
 into attention, not stiffened into inaction. 
 
 About a year later Van Dyck painted 
 these three children again, differently and 
 less effectively grouped. Little James has 
 lost his air of baby wisdom and stands 
 looking rather frightened between Charles 
 and Mary, both of whom seem much more 
 self-conscious than in the earlier picture, 
 and quite aware of what is taking place. 
 Prince Charles has outgrown his frocks, 
 and leans against a column attired in a silk 
 suit and knee breeches ; white satin shoes 
 with huge rosettes, and a beautiful lace 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 111 
 
 collar being prominent features in his cos- 
 tume. On each side of the group is a 
 small spaniel. 
 
 Two years later Van Dyck painted a 
 larger group, of which Prince Charles 
 and a huge boarhound, on whose head the 
 boy's hand rests, are the central figures. 
 To the left stand Prince James and Prin- 
 cess Mary, while on the right of the picture 
 are the latest additions to the family. 
 Princess Elizabeth and Princess Anne. 
 The latter, a crowing, kicking baby of a 
 few months old, lies in a big cushioned 
 chair, supported by the little Elizabeth, 
 herself scarcely more than an infant. If 
 Van Dyck's painting of the three elder 
 children is not so successful in this as in 
 former groups, there is nothing to complain 
 of in the treatment of the two youngest. 
 Little Anne stretches out one hand in an 
 effort to touch the big boarhound, and the 
 timid delight on the face of her elder sister 
 is admirably expressed. The pleasure of 
 the little princess in being trusted to hold 
 
112 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 the baby is tempered by the fear lest the 
 child should slip from her grasp and hurt 
 herself. 
 
 A very lovely portrait of Princess Eliza- 
 beth at a later age is at Penshurst Place, 
 the home of the Sidneys. 
 
 The nearest in sentiment to Van Dyck 
 is Sir Peter Lely, an artist whom we claim 
 as belonging to the British Isles, though 
 his birthplace was the other side of the 
 channel. His style, even at its best, 
 though modelled on that of Van Dyck, is 
 hardly worthy of comparison with his 
 master's. All his portraits, even those of 
 children, are characterised by a good deal of 
 affectation. The picture here reproduced 
 is a case in point (Plate xx.). 
 
 The subject is a little girl feeding a 
 parrot ; as it is merely entitled ' Portrait of 
 a Girl,' we may suppose that the aim in 
 introducing the parrot was to give an ap- 
 pearance of naturalness ; the result, how- 
 ever, is to accentuate the stiffness of the 
 composition. The child is holding some 
 
fLATE XX 
 
 C.IRI, FEEniNG A PARROT 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 113 
 
 cherries in her frock, which is gathered up 
 to show her bare feet ; she holds a handful 
 of the fruit out to the parrot, who is 
 perched on a balustrade at her right, but 
 she is thinking so little about the bird, and 
 so much about her own appearance, that 
 she does not hold them near enough, and 
 the poor parrot has to crane his neck to 
 reach them. Any ordinary child would 
 show some interest in her pet, but this 
 little girl does not even look at it, and 
 stands with an air of great complacency, 
 knowing that her hair is nicely curled, and 
 supremely conscious of her best frock. 
 This is of a bluish-white material, pre- 
 sumably satin, but the folds into which it 
 falls are so stiff that it might be glazed 
 calico. A gold band passes from under 
 her left arm across and over her right 
 shoulder. 
 
 This picture shows well the diflFerence 
 between Van Dyck's and Lely's children. 
 Van Dyck's portraits never give you the 
 impression that the children are wearing 
 
114 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 their best clothes for the occasion ; Lely's 
 children are thinking of nothing else, and 
 so force the fact on your notice. 
 
 In the works of Rembrandt but few 
 children are to be found. He painted 
 them as inevitable accessories in any do- 
 mestic scene, but we shall hardly find in 
 the whole range of his works a picture 
 where a child is the central figure ; except 
 perhaps ' The Adoration of the Magi ' at 
 Buckingham Palace, in which the Divine 
 child is illumined with rays of light which 
 serve to intensify the gloom of the re- 
 mainder of the scene. ' Jacob Blessing his 
 Grandchildren ' is another picture in which 
 children play a part, but our attention is 
 rather fixed on the frail patriarch and his 
 daughter-in-law, Asenath, than on the 
 recipients of the blessing. The figure of 
 Joseph at the head of the bed also attracts 
 our notice, as he gently tries to guide the 
 old man's hand to the head of the elder 
 boy Manasseh, from its resting-place on 
 the fair curls of Ephraim ; while the child 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 115 
 
 listens attentively to his grandfather's 
 words, as if fully comprehending their 
 significance. 
 
 Perhaps the sweetest child's face in the 
 art of Holland is that by Govert Flinck, a 
 ' Portrait of a Young Girl ' in the Louvre. 
 Crowned with flowers, this little maid 
 sits looking out of the frame with a smiling 
 face. The smile is, as is often the case 
 with children, more in her eyes than on her 
 mouth. Held in her hand, like a sceptre, 
 is a long shovel-shaped spade, such as the 
 Dutch children use at the seaside. And 
 so this little solitary queen waits cheerful 
 and content, even happy, looking for the 
 train of courtiers who never come, and 
 graciously accepting the homage of the 
 passers-by. 
 
 A characteristic scene is represented in 
 a picture by Jan Steen in the Ryks Museum 
 at Amsterdam, entitled 'The Feast of 
 St. Nicholas,' where a family of children 
 is shown enjoying the treasures Santa 
 Claus has provided. The festival is kept 
 
116 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 in Holland on the 6th of December, not, 
 as with us, on Christmas Day, the 25th. 
 On the evening of the day before the little 
 ones hang up their shoes and stockings^ 
 and, according to their deserts, so are these 
 receptacles filled by the Saint ; for the 
 good children toys, for the bad ones dis- 
 appointment. In the background of the 
 picture, which is said to represent the 
 artist's family, are the grandparents. The 
 old man leaning forward with his hands on 
 his knees watches with delight the joy of a 
 chubby little girl in the foreground, who 
 carries an armful of toys, and towards 
 whom her mother holds out her hands. At 
 the mother's side is a boy whose face posi- 
 tively beams ; you can in imagination hear 
 him laugh. Behind her is the eldest boy 
 with the baby of the family in his arms 
 and another little brother at his side. He 
 points upwards with one hand ; both chil- 
 dren follow with their eyes the direction of 
 his gesture, and from the rapt look on their 
 faces we might imagine he is explaining 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 117 
 
 how St. Nicholas drives in his sledge over 
 the house-tops, and when he reaches the 
 home of good little boys and girls he de- 
 scends the chimney and fills their socks 
 with all sorts of nice things. Ah, the good 
 Saint, he knows so well what each child 
 has set its heart on having ! But this time 
 St. Nicholas has overlooked — purposely 
 perhaps — one member of the family. A 
 big boy, who has doubtless idled away the 
 hours at school instead of attending to his 
 tasks, stands by, tears streaming down his 
 face, and his knuckles pressed into his eyes. 
 The laughing boy points a derisive finger 
 at him, and the elder sister directs his 
 attention to the birch rod placed, as his 
 appropriate gift, in his shoe. A spark of 
 amusement in her face, and the beckon- 
 ing finger of the grandmother, who is 
 drawing aside a curtain in the corner of 
 the room, lead us to suppose that St. 
 Nicholas has not been so hard-hearted after 
 all, and that there is something in store for 
 the delinquent besides this timely warning. 
 
118 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 A master in the painting of Dutch 
 childhood was Nicholas Maes. He is 
 known as one of the chief colourists of the 
 Dutch school; so his claim to distinction 
 is a double one. A picture in the Wallace 
 Collection illustrates this. A laughing 
 boy in a slashed tunic of a beautiful shade 
 of red, with fair hair under his blatk 
 hat, holds a hawk on his right wrist, and 
 the ends of a leash in his left hand. His 
 face, though almost unnaturally pale, is lit 
 up by the brightness of his eyes and the 
 gaiety of his smile. 
 
 Better known and even more beautiful 
 in its own way is ' The Dutch Housewife ' 
 (Plate XXI.). To describe the picture is not 
 to give any very clear idea of it, though its 
 subject is of the simplest and most ordinary 
 character, merely the scraping of a parsnip. 
 This does not sound very attractive perhaps, 
 and were this all the picture might not 
 excite our interest to any great degree . The 
 charm of colour and sunshine in this little 
 work is great, but the most fascinating 
 
PLATE XXI 
 
 THE DUTCH HOUSEWIFE 
 
 MAES 
 
N 
 
 THE CHILD IN ART 119 
 
 figure in it is, not the worthy lady with 
 the knife at work on the parsnip, but the 
 child at her elbow. This quaint little 
 figure stands motionless, intently watch- 
 ing the operation. We have noticed that 
 frequently children are so absorbed in their 
 own little concerns as to take no interest 
 in the occupations of their elders. This 
 picture represents precisely the other view 
 of the case, and shows a no less charac- 
 teristic trait of childhood. Often the 
 trivial incidents and business of everyday 
 life will cause children to stand in silent 
 wonder and watch the proceedings of their 
 mother or elder sister with an intensity of 
 interest which we might suppose would 
 only be lavished on an important crisis. 
 This little maid's attentive face and atti- 
 tude form an interesting contrast to a 
 little figure in a picture of ' Christ Blessing 
 Little Children,' which though acknow- 
 ledged to be by an artist of the school of 
 Rembrandt, is often attributed to Maes. 
 There the child on whose head the hand of 
 
120 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 the Christ rests is utterly indifferent to the 
 blessing. He would even be running off 
 in the direction in which his eyes are turned 
 as if watching, had not the Christ laid a 
 detaining hand upon his arm. Among the 
 little crowd surrounding them is another 
 youngster being hoisted up by a bigger 
 boy to look. 
 
 Next to Maes with his delightful ' Dutch 
 Housewife,' we may place Pieter de Hooch 
 with his ' Court of a Dutch House,' 
 from the National Gallery, or 'The 
 Buttery' from the Ryks Museum. He 
 loses nothing by comparison. There is 
 the same sympathetic treatment of the 
 child in each. Look at the pride of the 
 little maiden in 'The Buttery,' as she 
 takes the jug into her tiny hands with 
 such care. The servant girl who gives it 
 her seems to say, 'Hadn't you better let 
 me carry it for you?' and every Une in 
 the child's attitude seems to answer for 
 the safety of that jug in its transit to the 
 other room. The sunshine streams in 
 
PLATE XXII 
 
 THE COURT OF A DUTCH HOUSE 
 
 DE HOOCH 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 121 
 
 through the window just as it lights up 
 the courtyard in the other picture, 'The 
 Court of a Dutch House,' which we re- 
 produce (Plate XXII.). 
 
 It has been a hot day. Outside through 
 the porch where stands the waiting wife, 
 we can see the glow of the evening sun- 
 light. A passage leads from the porch 
 into a cool courtyard paved with bricks ; 
 over the doorway is an inscription, and 
 on the lowest stone at the right hand of 
 the door are the initials P. D. H. and the 
 date 1653. On a low step beneath a leaf- 
 covered trellis are a servant girl with a 
 dish, and a little girl some four or five 
 years old. They have been out feeding 
 the hens, and the child has further amused 
 herself gathering some fruit which she 
 holds in her apron ; now the little girl 
 comes to greet her father on his return 
 from the day's work. 
 
 Yet one more picture to close this little 
 gallery of Dutch children : and one which 
 does not illustrate any particular character- 
 
122 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 istic of childhood, but is simply a picture 
 of the children themselves engaged in the 
 enthralling occupation of blowing bubbles 
 (Plate XXIII.). The elder boy leaning 
 with his hand on the window-sill anxiously 
 watches the progress of a bubble which 
 floats above his head. Behind him is his 
 little brother with cheeks puffed out in 
 the exertion of blowing another. In his 
 other hand the bigger boy holds a cap 
 of dull crimson velvet adorned with 
 beautiful golden and white plumes, accord- 
 ing well with his suit of grey with ruffles 
 of white at neck and wrists, and his curly 
 fair hair. This picture, by Netscher, is 
 in the National Gallery, and is little like 
 the ordinary Dutch style. They are not 
 homely children in caps and wooden 
 shoes, but little cavaliers ; yet capable of 
 enjoying life just as thoroughly in their 
 silks and velvets as their humbler brothers 
 and sisters in homespun. 
 
 The art of Germany, Holland and 
 Flanders did, as we have seen, make much 
 
PLATE XXI 1 1 
 
 BLOWING BUBBLES 
 
 NETSCHER 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 123 
 
 more of the simple and real side of life, 
 as opposed to the imaginative and ideal 
 view of things. The sunny skies and 
 open outdoor life of Italy did not promote 
 the cultivation of the home, which was 
 the idol of the Teutonic heart. The 
 artists of each country looked at Nature 
 differently. The Italians were handi- 
 capped at the start, and began with the 
 ideal. The northern artists began with 
 the material nearest at hand, and made 
 the truth of Nature, as manifested to them, 
 the subjects for their brush. Then in 
 the endeavour ' to avoid the fault with 
 which they reproached the Dutch — that 
 of not knowing how to idealise the real — 
 the Germans fell into the opposite ex- 
 treme, of being unable to realise the ideal.' ^ 
 Consequently after the death of Durer 
 and Holbein, artistic Germany fell into 
 a state of coma, from which it was even- 
 tually revived by the efforts of Cornelius 
 and Overbeck. 
 
 ' Wonders ofEuropmn Art. Louis Viardot, p. 101 (1871). 
 
124 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Whatevet has been the fate of child- 
 hood in German art, whatever lies in 
 store for it in the future, one name, that 
 of Ludwig Richter, will stand out among 
 aU modern artists of whatever land as one 
 deserving of honour. The tender grace 
 of childhood lends itself to book-illustra- 
 tion, and Richter's drawings in a volume 
 of fairy stories are very true to the child 
 spirit. From the tiniest infants to older 
 boys and girls, Richter's children are en- 
 dowed with the same wonderful sweetness. 
 Now we see a merry troop blowing on 
 long trumpets the glad tidings of Christ- 
 mas; now frolicking in the fields, or 
 resting, weary from their games, on the 
 soft grass. Sometimes in the depths of 
 the woodland we catch a glimpse of Red 
 Riding Hood gathering flowers; farther 
 on we meet Hansel and Gretel starting 
 with their father and mother on their 
 adventurous journey. Then on a rainy 
 day we may come upon numbers of 
 children in the warm shelter of the kitchen 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 125 
 
 carrying on games modified to suit their 
 more limited environment. As evening 
 falls we may see these little ones tucked 
 up in bed, having said their nightly prayer 
 at an elder sister's knee, and believe that 
 their pilldvFS will be guarded by a little 
 fairy whose duty it is to whisper the 
 sweetest dreams into the ears of good 
 children until they wake. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN Spanish art two names rise pro- 
 minently before our minds, those of 
 Velasquez and Murillo. Before their day 
 the art of Spain was merely a translation 
 of the most debased style of Italian art 
 All individual tendencies were crushed 
 by the hand of the Inquisition : and con- 
 ventional religious pictures alone represent 
 the early art of this most barbarous of 
 civilised nations. Can we indeed expect 
 to find any adequate appreciation of 
 innocent childhood in an art consecrated 
 to the service of a Church so strongly 
 influenced by the Inquisition that an 
 office, • that of 'Inspector of Sacred 
 Pictures,' was instituted in order to re- 
 press any unorthodox tendencies on the 
 part of the artists ? 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 127 
 
 This gloomy state of affairs prevailed 
 until the seventeenth century when two 
 brilliant meteors flashed their light upon 
 the national art, only to die and leave no 
 worthy successor to carry on the distinc- 
 tion which they, through their greatness, 
 gave to Spanish painting. As far as the 
 art of Spain is concerned they stand alone, 
 unrivalled in its history. Yet there is no 
 question of comparison between them, 
 for Velasquez, like Van Dyck, is the artist 
 of the aristocracy ; Murillo, unlike any 
 other in his age, is the painter of poverty. 
 
 The portraits of Velasquez are his chief 
 works, and amongst his sitters we find 
 the little Don Balthazar Carlos, and the In- 
 fanta Margarita Maria. Of these children, 
 Velasquez painted many portraits. We 
 can trace on his canvas every stage of the 
 growth and every fresh development of 
 the character of the little prince. Yet 
 from his earliest years he is dignified and 
 stately. Whether as a tiny child in stiff 
 robes of material so rich that it might 
 
128 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 almost stand alone^ or as a little lad in 
 hunting dress accompanied by his four- 
 footed attendants, or mounted on his over- 
 fed pony, his rank is always, apparent. 
 Of these the most famous picture is, the 
 equestrig,n portrait in the Prado at Madrid, 
 here reproduced (Plate xxiv.). His fat 
 pony prances up a slight incline towards 
 us, looking almost ready to leap out of the 
 picture. In spite of what would seem 
 unwonted energy on the part of his steed, 
 the little prince sits as steadily and serenely 
 as if he were mounted on a wooden rocking- 
 horse. His dress is rich, as are also the 
 trappings of his pony, and from undet 
 the dark brim of his hat a very serious 
 little face looks out at us. His royalty 
 sits quaintly upon his small shoulders; 
 he is every inch a prince. 
 
 Equally sedate is the little Infanta, 
 Margarita Maria. We feel rather sorry for 
 the three-year-old baby, who, in the pic- 
 ture in the Vienna Gallery, carries a fan 
 and is dressed up in stiff silks and laces. 
 
PLATE XXIV 
 
 DON BALTHAZAR CARLOS 
 
 VELASQUEZ 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 129 
 
 like the elder ladies of the court. Her 
 portrait in the Louvre, of which there is 
 a replica in the Wallace Collection, shows 
 us a pretty little fair-haired girl, a knot 
 of pink ribbon in her hair, which is 
 arranged simply, like that of an English 
 child. Her dress of white satin is trimmed 
 with rows and rows of black lace. The 
 same child is the central figure of 
 Velasquez's famous group 'Las Meninas,' 
 or ' The Maids of Honour ' ; and though 
 she is distinguished by a regal dignity, we 
 feel that her rank is oppressive, and that 
 she is at heart as blithe and gay as the 
 little maiden in the ' The Betrothal.' 
 
 This picture, once attributed to Velas- 
 quez, is supposed to represent the 
 betrothal of the artist's little grand- 
 daughter. The principal figures in this 
 group are on a platform. The artist him- 
 self, pen in hand, is seated at the table 
 ready to sign the marriage contract ; near 
 him are two friends who have probably 
 come to witness the ceremony. Behind 
 
130 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 the chief actress in the scene, the little girl, 
 stands her mother, the artist's daughter. 
 She and her father smile at the eager joy 
 of the child who, as she sees her future 
 husband appearing, waves a greeting to 
 him with the flower in her hand. She has 
 no knowledge of what lies before her, or of 
 what this formal visit implies ; she only 
 looks upon him as a kind elder brother 
 who will play with her, and enter into any 
 of her childish delights with a zeal equal 
 to her own. A very natural incident in 
 the picture is to be noticed in the left- 
 hand corner, where the dog, barking 
 furiously, flies at a slave who is bringing 
 in a basket of fruit. 
 
 This picture illustrates a child's joy; 
 whilst hung immediately opposite it is a 
 peculiarly dramatic scene of which grief is 
 the keynote. ' Christ at the Column ' is 
 the name given to the picture ; an alter- 
 native title has been suggested, ' The 
 Institution of Prayer.' The Christ, whose 
 hands are bound by a long cord attached 
 
PLATE XXV 
 
 BEGGAR BOYS 
 
 MURILLO 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 131 
 
 to a pillar, has sunk down on the ground. 
 Beside him lie the rod and scourges, theT 
 cruel blows from which have caused the 
 blood to trickle down his shoulder. Behind 
 stands an angel directing the gaze of a 
 kneeling child to the sorrow and suffering 
 of the Redeemer. The child kneels with 
 clasped hands and parted lips in the atti- 
 tude of prayer, and from its heart to the 
 Christ's ear stretches a ray of light. Grief 
 and pity mingle in the child's face. 
 
 Velasquez was essentially the painter of 
 character, as Murillo was essentially the 
 painter of sentiment. In delineating child- 
 hood Murillo is at his best. His earliest 
 fame in England rested on his pictures of 
 beggar children, and it may rightly continue 
 to do so. The portrayal of poverty is his 
 own particular province, which has been in- 
 vaded by few with much success. Two of 
 Murillo's most famous pictures of beggar 
 boys are in the Dulwich Gallery. One 
 represents a trio of ragamuffins, two of 
 whom are seated on the ground. The 
 
132 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 third, a negro, holding a jar on his shoulder, 
 stretches out his hand as if asking for a 
 share of the tart which is held by one of 
 his companions. The other picture (Plate 
 XXV.) shows a boy playing with two balls 
 and an iron bar or spiike. He laughs up 
 over his shoulder at another lad, who 
 stands by munching a mouthful of bread 
 from the loaf in his hand. Both children 
 are in rags, one being barefooted; and 
 between them stands a dog, who, though 
 the tidiest figure in the group, is none the 
 less hungry, and looks up imploringly at 
 the bread in his little master's hand. 
 
 The Munich Gallery is rich in similar 
 specimens of Murillo's art. Little bare- 
 footed urchins crouching in sunny street 
 comers, eating juicy melons and grapes, or 
 gambling with dice. Perhaps the least 
 pleasing, and most truthful, is the picture 
 of a sunburnt boy lying in front of an 
 old womah with his head in her lap, while 
 she performs the task of hairdresser. 
 Well may critics accuse Murillo of loving 
 
PLATE XXVI 
 
 THE HOLY FAMILY 
 
 MUKILI.O 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 133 
 
 to dwell on the nlerely disgusting aspect 
 of poverty, the dirt ! The child's attitude, 
 however, is remarkably good. In his hand 
 he holds a piece of bread, which a puppy, 
 taking advantage of his helplessness, is 
 trying to reach. The boy has failed to 
 ward off the dog's attacks with his free 
 hand, and clasps the bread more tightly 
 to him, having previously bitten off a 
 large piece which he is contentedly 
 munching. 
 
 Some of Murillo's religious pictures are 
 very beautiful, but in an entirely super- 
 ficial way. The character is nowhere; 
 though some of his children are very 
 pretty. The ' Good Shepherd,' the ' Chil- 
 dren of the Shell ' in the Prado, the ' St. 
 John and a Lamb ' in the National Gallery ; 
 all these are charming conceptions of child- 
 hood, but what more are they than por- 
 traits of little peasant boys, who have been 
 washed, be it understood, and from whose 
 faces all trace of roguishness, the quality 
 which principally takes our fancy in 
 
134 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Murillo's gamins, has been eliminated, 
 leaving them insipidly pretty and no 
 more? The 'St. John and a Lamb' is 
 only a dark-haired, dark-eyed peasant, with 
 his arms thrown round a lamb ; a pretty 
 scene, but hardly a worthy personification 
 of him who was the forerunner of the 
 Lamb of God. 
 
 'The Holy Family' (Plate xxvi.) is 
 another insipid composition. The child 
 stands on a stone between Joseph and 
 Mary ; the latter holds his hand anxiously 
 as if doubtful whether he can stand alone. 
 In Joseph's hand is a blossoming branch. 
 Above the child's head flutters a dove; 
 while in the clouds is the Almighty, bear- 
 ing a crystal globe and surrounded by a 
 company of insignificant cherubs. It is 
 all very pretty, but very shallow. There 
 is no new thought ; nor even the new 
 expression of an old thought ; it is as the 
 outer husk of the old thought from which 
 the grain has been beaten. 
 
 Murillo's 'Guardian Angel,' from the 
 
PLATE XXni 
 
 GIRL WITH AX APPLE 
 
 GRELV.E 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 135 
 
 Cathedral at Seville, is another of his 
 popular pictures, and one which does work 
 out an idea ; yet not wholly an original 
 idea, if the received interpretation of the 
 work is correct. For it is generally 
 accepted that the child is an embodied 
 soul whose steps up the difficult road of 
 life are watched over by a heavenly 
 guardian, continually directing its gaze to 
 a celestial destination. 
 
 No convent or church was considered 
 furnished without a picture of the ' Im- 
 maculate Conception.' MuriUo painted 
 dozens, which imposed no very great strain 
 on his creative faculty as an artist, and 
 may possibly account for the lack of force 
 in his other religious pictures, which were 
 also multiplied in the same profuse fashion. 
 Nevertheless, he shares with Velasquez the 
 honours of Spanish art ; their individuality 
 brightened the whole of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 About this time the French school of 
 painting came into being; though until 
 
136 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 the days of Watteau it was hardly distinct 
 and original. In Italy and Spain the 
 Church was responsible for the impulse and 
 direction given to art ; in France the Court 
 was the patron of painting, and the morals 
 of the age were scarcely conducive to the 
 appreciation of pictures which had for 
 subjects the simplicity and innocence of 
 childhood. In the early days of the French 
 school the artists who painted children did 
 not do so from choice, but at the order of 
 their court patrons, who wished to preserve 
 on canvas the features of their little sons 
 or daughters. So we shall find portraits of 
 little counts and high-born demoiselles 
 dressed up in extravagant styles, and 
 having few of the characteristics of child- 
 hood. Mignard, Le Brun, Rigaud, and 
 others painted portraits of children, yet 
 none of their productions were in sympathy 
 with the child spirit. Two only, that of 
 the Dauphin, son of Louis xiv., and of his 
 sister, Fran9oise Marie de Bourbon, are 
 quite charming ; the little girl in particular 
 
'J 
 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 137 
 
 as she sits blowing bubbles with a romping 
 puppy eager to snap at them. 
 
 Watteau, as we should expect, gives us 
 little children of precisely the same type as 
 his maturer figures. His genius was that 
 of dainty colouring and form ; beyond that 
 it showed but little variety, and the chil- 
 dren he shows us are worthy offspring of 
 his men and women. Precocious and 
 over-dressed they are for the most part, as 
 the accompanying illustration will show 
 (Plate XXVIII.). On the terrace, in the 
 foreground, are seated two ladies listening 
 to the strains of music which a gallant in 
 front is extracting from a guitar. Behind, 
 leaning on the back of their chairs, is 
 another man, whose violoncello is lying at 
 the ladies' feet. This group is completed 
 by two children, veritable little fashion- 
 plates, one of whom is carrying on a mild 
 flirtation with the dog. A servant at ,the 
 right of the picture is about to bring 
 some cooling drink from the bottles which 
 repose in a large bowl. 
 
138 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Watteau frequently introduces children 
 in his pictures, but they are all alike, and 
 of this type ; beautifully dressed, beauti- 
 fully finished French dolls, just what we 
 should expect. Another eighteenth-cen- 
 tury artist has a pleasant surprise in store, 
 and paints exactly what we should not 
 expect. The reputation of Fragonard 
 hardly leads us to suppose that if he 
 undertook to paint childhood at all, his 
 conception would be very ennobling. Yet 
 none the less has he succeeded in pro- 
 ducing a very charming open little 
 face in the picture known as the 'Fair- 
 haired Child' — a symphony in white, 
 pink, and blue. The little boy's arms 
 are closely folded, almost crushing the 
 pink flowers he carries, and he looks out 
 of the picture in a delightfully frank 
 manner. 
 
 This, together with his other picture 
 here reproduced, ' The Schoolmistress ' 
 (Plate XXIX.), hangs in the Wallace Collec- 
 tion. The latter represents an infants' 
 

 o 
 o 
 
 a; 
 u 
 
 W 
 X 
 H 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 139 
 
 school. Before the stern schoolmistress is 
 a blackboard on which are written the 
 letters of the alphabet. In front of this, 
 and facing her, is a tiny child clothed only 
 in an insufficient shirt. His little face is 
 puckered in perplexity, he twists up the 
 edge of his little shirt, and fidgets with his 
 feet. In the hands of his teacher are a 
 large loaf and a knife; perhaps she has 
 told him to spell their names. In vain 
 will the child seek inspiration from her 
 forbidding face ; any vague ideas he himself 
 may have on the subject flee at the sound 
 of titters from the children behind the 
 blackboard. His other companions have 
 finished their tasks and now play con- 
 tentedly behind their teacher's back; but 
 till this poor puzzled infant has given a 
 satisfactory answer he may not join them. 
 The huge cat purrs in supreme satisfaction 
 with its surroundings, and furnishes another 
 distraction to this baby who finds such con- 
 centrated effort rather too much for him. 
 Another picture by Fragonard in the Wal- 
 
140 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 lace Collection is 'A Study of a Young 
 Girl,' though it might more appropriately 
 be named ' A Young Girl Studying.' The 
 same look of perplexity is perceptible on 
 the child's face, which, though not pretty 
 in the fashion of Greuze, is nevertheless 
 full of expression and character. 
 
 'Assume a virtue if you have it not,' 
 might be the motto of Greuze. He gives 
 to his girls the features of children, but the 
 attractive names, such as ' Innocence,' 
 ' Modesty,' and so forth, are hardly borne 
 out by the expressions which we read in 
 the faces, expressions which cannot but 
 belong to maturer years, and which we do 
 not look for in the delineation of childhood. 
 Had Greuze confined himself to the study 
 and painting of babies, the probability is 
 that in course of time they would have 
 received at his hands precisely the same 
 treatment as his older girls. The time in 
 which he lived was against him. The 
 essence of the child spirit was poisoned, 
 nay, asphyxiated, by the moral and reli- 
 
PLATE XXX 
 
 
 
 "2 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 - --^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^'jmI 
 
 HhHR/^ 
 
 i^ 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 STUDV OK (IKIEK 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 141 
 
 gious atmosphere of the age. Take, for 
 example, the 'Study of Grief (Plate 
 XXX.). The features are entirely those i 
 of a child ; if we look at it for a moment 
 without paying any attention to the 
 expression, we shall find a perfect child's 
 face, but the expression kills it, the atti- 
 tude stamps the figure as unchildlike. 
 
 The 'Girl with an Apple' (Plate xxvii.), 
 on the contrary, is a child ; unlike the 
 ' Study of Grief,' or the ' Broken Pitcher,' 
 in which a child's head has been fitted 
 on to the shoulders of a woman. Among 
 all the thirty or forty single heads 
 Greuze painted, this ' Girl with an Apple ' 
 is the only child, and is, furthermore, 
 the most pleasing of his conceptions of 
 childhood. 
 
 There are cottage interiors and domestic 
 scenes, and various pictures in which a 
 child figures, but though Greuze frequently 
 made children the pretext for his pictures, 
 they are very rarely the subject of them. 
 Even though the title should lead us to 
 
142 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 suppose it, the child is seldom the most 
 prominent feature in the composition. 
 
 It has been noted that the manners and 
 morals of the age did not make for the 
 well-being of childhood in art. Yet among 
 the puppets of the seventeenth and eight- 
 eenth centuries, there are some dainty, 
 sprightly little creatures who remind us 
 that childhood in the hands of certain 
 artists of France was by no means entirely 
 degraded. Some charming portraits exist, 
 one of Fran9ois-Louis Gounod, father of 
 the composer, by Lepicid, and of the little 
 Chevalier de Pange by Drouais. Both are 
 lovely children, and each is every inch a 
 gentleman. The ill-fated dauphin, son of 
 Louis XVI., was painted by Latour and 
 Madame Le Brun. Latour's is the portrait 
 of the prince in court dress with powdered 
 hair ; Madame Le Brun's is the picture of 
 the boy, his brown hair straightly brushed, 
 his coat open at the throat and ruffled 
 with white. Very pleasing also is her 
 ' Portrait of a Boy in Red.' Mischief per- 
 
PLATE XXXI 
 
 MADAMIC Lie BRUN AND HER DAUGHTER 
 
 MAUAME LE BRUN 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 143 
 
 sonified is this little lad. His tightly 
 fitting coat is of a beautiful shade of red, 
 with white ruffles at the neck and wrists. 
 He leans his left arm on the table before 
 him, and turning round, looks up with the 
 sauciest little smile. 
 
 The portrait of Madame Le Brun and 
 her daughter is too well-known to need 
 any word,s of description. There are two 
 portraits in the Louvre of herself and her 
 child; the accompanying reproduction is 
 of the more popular and beautiful picture 
 (Plate XXXI.). The tender pride on the 
 mother's face, and the trust and confidence 
 expressed in the child's attitude are beauti- 
 fully rendered. 
 
 Other artists in the end of the eighteenth 
 and early years of the nineteenth centuries, 
 notably Prud'hon and Delaroche, pro- 
 duced, if not the highest ideal of child- 
 hood, certainly very truthful pictures of 
 children. What attractiveness there is 
 in the delighted children in Prud'hon's 
 picture, ' Puppies ' ! Who has not seen a 
 
144 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 similar cloud on a child's face to that which 
 Delaroche shows us in 'A Child Learn- 
 ing to Read'? (Plate xxxii.). The sulky 
 little thing disregarding all its mother's 
 coaxing efforts, while the other baby looks 
 supremely uncomfortable holding the book 
 which is nearly as big as itself. 
 
 A child's terror is no easy thing to repre- 
 sent, and Delaroche has painted it very 
 successfully in his picture of ' The Little 
 Princes in the Tower ' (Plate xxxiii. ). The 
 reproduction here given is from the smaller 
 version in the Wallace Collection ; the 
 larger picture is in the Louvre. The elder 
 boy, Edward v., is sitting on the edge of a 
 huge four-poster, the white draperies of 
 which seem to attract the only rays of 
 light in the gloomy apartment. Crouching' 
 against him is the little Duke of York, an 
 open volume in his hands. Through the 
 intense gloom at the left of the picture, at 
 the level of the floor, comes a streak of 
 light, seemingly from below the door; 
 towards this a little dog runs barking. 
 
PLATE XXXIl 
 
 A CHll.l) I.KAkMNC TO RI-.AH 
 
 ni:T,.\Knciij; 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 145 
 
 The children, terror-stricken, glance appre- 
 hensively in either direction. 
 
 Like Richter in Germany, Edouard 
 Fr^re loved childhood, and painted it in 
 almost every aspect. One of the most 
 sympathetic of artists, like his fellow- 
 countryman Millet he painted the lives of 
 peasants, and his children receive the same 
 respectful treatment as Millet gives to his 
 workers in the fields. The scenes he paints 
 are every whit as simple and homely. A 
 little brother and sister sitting side by side 
 on a staircase, reading ; a little girl stand- 
 ing on tiptoe on a cane-bottomed chair, 
 taking down a small looking-glass which 
 hangs almost out of her reach ; a little 
 group of children expectant of the midday 
 meal which their widowed mother is pre- 
 paring for them ; some boys sliding on a 
 slippery hillside; these are the scenes 
 which Fr^re paints with a magic touch, 
 and invests with a harmony undreamt of 
 in the fetes champHres of Watteau and 
 Lancret. 
 
146 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 To come still nearer to our own times, 
 Bouguereau's child pictures are some of 
 the most beautiful in modern art. His 
 Cupids are delightful, having all the most 
 winning qualities of human children. The 
 little creatures in his picture 'L'Assaut' 
 are just little naked boys and girls with 
 downy wings clustering round a pretty 
 elder sister. The same may be said of the 
 happy band who try to prevent the flight 
 of an escaping nymph. They use every 
 endeavour to compel her to stay, they 
 flutter round her head and whisper en- 
 treaties in her ear; she laughingly raises 
 her arms and bids them begone. In 
 despair, Cupid raises his bow and tightens 
 the string, another poisfes a dart above her 
 dark hair, while a third flings himself on 
 the ground before her, imprisoning her 
 ankle in his dimpled hand and pressing her 
 backwards. 
 
 How much more beautiful, too, than 
 Greuze's personification of 'Innocence' is 
 Bouguereau's picture bearing the same 
 
c 
 
 H 
 
 r. u 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 147 
 
 name, of a maiden carrying in her arms a 
 sleeping child and a lamb I 
 
 It was the dream of Bouguereau's youth 
 to devote his life to religious painting. 
 His Madonnas are weU known in England, 
 and are particularly beautiful. One of the 
 most touching is ' La Vierge Consolatrice ' 
 (Plate XXXIV.). A mother in robes of 
 mourning has come to cast her sorrow, her 
 bruised and desolate heart, at the Virgin's 
 feet. She flings herself on her knees, her 
 hands twisted in supplication — for what? 
 She hardly knows ; her wound is too fresh 
 for her prayers to be coherent. And the 
 Madonna, whose own heart was pierced 
 with the same sword, lifts her hands and 
 eyes in prayer that this stricken mother 
 may be comforted. At the Virgin's feet 
 the mourner has laid the lifeless, rigid body 
 of a little child — the child of whom Death 
 the Reaper has robbed her. The flowers 
 gathered by his hand lie scattered and 
 withering on the steps, symbohc of her 
 blighted hopes. But as the roses whose 
 
148 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 petals droop and die will bloom afresh in 
 fields of light, so will this little blossom, 
 plucked up by the root from a mother's 
 heart, grow to perfection in the garden 
 whither he has been transplanted by the 
 messenger of God. 
 
PLATE XXXIV 
 
 LA VIERGE CONSOLATRICE 
 
 BOUGUEREAU 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IT is curious to notice that though it was 
 to Christianity that the child owed 
 its status in art, and though Italy was the 
 first nation to bring this into prominence, 
 it was not in the art of Italy that the 
 conception of childhood reached its highest 
 ideal. The perfection of the child-form 
 was attained by Italian painters and sculp- 
 tors ; the perfection of child-character was 
 exemplified by the artists of HoUand. It 
 remained for the British school to eiFect 
 the union of the two. 
 
 Prior to the eighteenth century, a de- 
 finitely British school can hardly be said 
 to exist. There was the imported art of 
 Holbein, Van Dyck, and Lely, but not 
 until the days of Hogarth, who may be 
 called the father of English painting, was 
 
150 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 our national art thoroughly established as 
 such, Hogarth was essentially not a painter 
 of childhood, and to find any delineation 
 of children we must turn to the portrait 
 painters belonging to this century. 
 
 First in chronological order, first in order 
 of merit, stands Sir Joshua Reynolds. His 
 fame rests upon his portrait painting, and 
 hardly less upon his portraiture of child- 
 hood. Indeed, it has been borne in upon 
 the minds of many critics that we have to 
 thank Sir Joshua for the creation of the 
 child in art. Whether this statement is 
 wholly or only partially true, it is certain 
 that it was he who first raised childhood 
 to its true level in art. ' The childless man 
 knew most of childhood, depicted its beauty 
 in the truest and happiest spirit of comedy, 
 entered into its changeful soul with the 
 tenderest, heartiest sympathy, played with 
 the playful, sighed with the sorrowful, and 
 mastered all the craft of infancy.'^ His 
 
 1 F. G. Stephens, English Children as Painted by Reynolds. 
 London, 1884. 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 151 
 
 children are never forced into unnatural 
 poses ; they are perfectly free from affecta- 
 tion or self- consciousness. A Reynolds 
 child-portrait has the effect of a snap-shot 
 in oil. 
 
 Take that of Miss Bowles, which may 
 be seen in the Wallace Collection. The 
 little girl is sitting on the ground with 
 her arms clasped round her dog. A romp 
 with the animal has resulted in the sudden 
 over-balancing of the child, who drags him 
 to the ground with her. The dog looks 
 far from happy, but the child's face is lit 
 up by a gleeful smile, as if she thoroughly 
 enjoyed it. No doubt she did; for Sir 
 Joshua was kindness itself to his little 
 sitters. They possessed as great a charm 
 for him as their portraits do for us. The 
 father and mother of little Miss Bowles 
 first decided to let the child sit to Romney 
 for her portrait; however, on the advice of a 
 friend, who assured them that even a faded 
 picture by Reynolds would be the finest 
 thing they could have, they invited Sir 
 
152 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Joshua to dine with them and make the 
 acquaintance of the little girl. He did so, 
 and so completely won her heart by the 
 tricks and stories with which he amused 
 her during dinner, that she thought him 
 the kindest man in the world, and was 
 delighted to be taken next day to his 
 studio. 
 
 The delight of the Duchess of Devon- 
 shire's baby as it is danced up and down 
 by its mother is another evanescent expres- 
 sion successfully imprisoned on the canvas ; 
 and with this and the laughter of Miss 
 Bowles, the demure face of little Penelope 
 Boothby forms a pretty contrast (Plate 
 XXXV.). Her portrait shows her to be the 
 quaintest little lady in a huge cap, cross- 
 over bodice, and long mittens. Behind her 
 delightful little air of solemnity there lurks 
 a suspicion of merrin^ent, and her mouth 
 is compressed like a tiny rosebud in the 
 effort to repress the smile which threatens 
 to break out. Though not so well-known 
 as many others of his portraits, this is one 
 
PLATE XXXV 
 
 MISS PENELOPE BOOTHBY 
 
 REYNOLDS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 153 
 
 of the most perfect child-faces from Sir 
 Joshua's brush, and deserves to be classed 
 among his masterpieces. 
 
 The three child-pictures most generally- 
 known are 'The Age of Innocence ' (Frontis- 
 piece), 'The Infant Samuel,' and 'Heads 
 of Angels ' (Plate xxxvi.). These pictures 
 alone would suffice to show what the joy 
 and love in childhood, as inspired by the 
 teaching of Christianity, has done for its de- 
 lineation in art. No pagan age could have 
 evoked ' The Age of Innocence. ' No infant 
 of heathenism could have been inspired 
 with such simplicity and devotion as this 
 child Samuel. 'I do not know,' writes 
 Mr. Lecky to a friend, ' whether Reynolds' 
 " Infant Samuel " is an original conception. 
 If it is, I think it must be the one religious 
 type in art w^hich England has given to 
 the world.' Then, again, where among the 
 multitudes of cherubim which flood the 
 skies of the Southern artists shall we find 
 anything to equal, much less surpass those 
 exquisite ' Angel Heads'? 'A final separa- 
 
154 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 tion,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'from the Greek 
 art, which can be proud in a torso without 
 a head, is achieved by the master who 
 paints for you five little girls' heads, with- 
 out ever a torso.' ^ That they are far re- 
 moved from Italian and Greek ideals is 
 obvious. More than this, could we wish 
 to see a more perfect illustration of the 
 words 'for of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven ' than these lovely cherubs ? 
 
 The children in these three pictures en- 
 dear themselves to us by their attractiveness 
 as children, and further by the underlying 
 suggestion or thought. This last is entirely 
 spontaneous, yet not obtrusive. We see at 
 first glance, perhaps, nothing but the child 
 itself, and fall in love with it immediately : 
 then we realise that not only is it charm- 
 ing, considered in its human relations, but 
 as the expression and conveyance of the 
 most beautiful lessons of Christianity, it 
 makes a deeper appeal to us. More par- 
 ticularly is this the case with ' The Age 
 
 1 The Art of England, p. 87. 
 
PLATE XX.WI 
 
 HEADS OF AN(;KI,S 
 
 KEYNOLUS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 155 
 
 of Innocence' and 'Heads of Angels.' 
 Neither of these pictures was painted 
 with the intent that it should preach or 
 teach. Both are portraits; the first of 
 Sir Joshua's great-niece, little Theophila 
 Gwatkin; the latter of Frances, daughter 
 of Lord William Gordon, and niece of 
 Lord George Gordon, who inaugurated the 
 'No -Popery Riots.' Yet they make a 
 more successful appeal to our deeper feel- 
 ings than Reynolds' avowedly religious 
 subjects. Take 'The Infant Samuel' and 
 ' St. John in the Wilderness,'. for instance. 
 In these there is a distinct religious tone. 
 The children, each a prophet, are earnestly 
 devout ; the one listening to the voice 
 which calls him; the other proclaiming 
 his message of the coming Redeemer. We 
 cannot, like Sir Joshua's contemporaries, 
 claim such ignorance as to ask, with 
 them, who Samuel was. Still, it is pro- 
 verbial that an Englishman does not 
 wear his heart upon his sleeve; he will 
 fight for, but he will not talk about, his 
 
156 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 religious convictions. Is this perhaps the 
 reason why we prefer the hidden meanings 
 of 'The Age of Innocence' to the more 
 apparent lessons of ' The Infant Samuel ' ? 
 
 The picture of ' St. John in the Wilder- 
 ness,' Wihich we reproduce (Plate xxxvii.), 
 hangs in the Wallace Collection. It shows 
 the Baptist seated on a stone, with a lamb 
 beside him. The sunny light falls on his 
 brown hair tinting it with gold, and on 
 his uplifted hand. The cross is in his 
 other hand, and his brown robe lies across 
 his knee. Contrast Sir Joshua's treatment 
 with Murillo's. Not only is Reynolds' 
 picture more characteristic of the Baptist, 
 but as a representation of childhood it is 
 more beautiful. 
 
 Many critics, speaking generally, and 
 comparing Reynolds' child -pictures with 
 those by Gainsborough, have claimed the 
 prize on behalf of the latter. Certainly 
 he achieved great success in the painting 
 of childhood, but whether he is considered 
 superior to Sir Josihua in this respect is a 
 
PLATS XXXVII 
 
 ST. JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 REYNOLDS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 157 
 
 matter of opinion and individual taste. 
 For absolute truthfulness, his pictures of 
 peasant children must rank above similar 
 subjects by Reynolds. Reynolds' poor 
 children are little ladies and gentlemen 
 dressed in picturesque rags; Gainsboroiigh's 
 are real, sunburnt English cottagers. A 
 characteristic picture is in the National 
 Gallery ; it is variously named ' Country 
 Children,' or 'Rustic Children,' and 
 represents two little girls and a boy. 
 The latter is seated on a bank, holding an 
 armful of sticks. Beside him stands the 
 elder sister with the baby of the party in 
 her arms, while in the distance, at the foot 
 of the hill, lies their cottage home. These 
 are quite poor children, accustomed to run 
 about without shoes and stockings, and 
 living a free open-air life. Whether out 
 in the fields, gathering round the cottage 
 doorway, or enjoying the warmth of the 
 blazing faggot-fire at nightfall, these chil- 
 dren are painted with an intimate sympathy, 
 and there is something more winning about 
 
158 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 them than about many of Gainsborough's 
 more aristocratic sitters. The cluster of 
 children in the picture of 'The Cottage 
 Door' is endowed with far more charm than 
 are those in the large canvas representing 
 the Baillie family, and many more instances 
 might be cited to show that though Gains- 
 borough was aware that the dignity of 
 childhood was the same in all walks of 
 life, and though he painted all children 
 with the same reverence and care, yet there 
 is a brightness and freshness about his 
 little gipsies which the others frequently 
 lack. 
 
 This is evinced more particularly by one 
 of Gainsborough's most famous pictures, 
 'The Blue Boy.' Though the subject of 
 it can only by a stretch of the imagination 
 be called a child, he certainly does not 
 exhibit the quality of brightness which is 
 so characteristic of Gainsborough's little 
 peasants. His face, an old one on young 
 shoulders, is serious, almost stern. Though 
 but a lad of about fifteen, his expression is 
 
PLATE .xxxrin 
 
 THE BLUE BOY 
 
 CiAINSBOROUGH 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 159 
 
 unchildlike. The picture, which shows 
 Gainsborough's admiration for Van Dyck, 
 portrays Master Jonathan Buttall dressed 
 in a blue silk suit, holding his plumed hat 
 in his hand. It is, said to have been 
 painted in defiance of the dictum of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, then President of the 
 Royal Academy, that cold colours, such 
 as blue, should not predominate in a pic- 
 ture. A slight discrepancy between the 
 dates of the painting of the picture, and 
 the occasion when Reynolds made this 
 statement, has caused this to be doubted. 
 The picture has been copied several times, 
 possibly on account of the discussion, and 
 many persons have claimed to possess the 
 original, which, however, belongs to the 
 Duke of Westminster. 
 
 One great difference between Reynolds 
 and Gainsborough in their painting of 
 childhood lies in this fact, while in Rey- 
 nolds' pictures our attention is riveted on 
 the chUd's face, its action, or attitude ; in 
 Gainsborough's portraits of little ladies and 
 
160 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 gentlemen, though we look at the children 
 themselves, we also cast an approving 
 glance at their clothes. The dresses worn 
 by Reynolds' children pass, and will pass, 
 unnoticed, whatever the age and whatever 
 the fashion. Gainsborough's children are 
 carefully, even beautifully, dressed in the 
 fashion of their day. They look as though 
 their nursery-maid was always on the 
 watch, straightening a ribbon or smooth- 
 ing a curl ; in short, as though they never 
 trusted themselves outside the park pal- 
 ings. 'Miss Haverfield,' in the Wallace 
 Collection, and the 'Family of Mr. J. 
 BaiUie,' in the National Gallery, are 
 examples of this. It must not be thought, 
 however, that this is characteristic of all 
 Gainsborough's child pictures. His little 
 gipsies were probably never inside the 
 park palings in their lives ; and another 
 illustration of his painting of childhood, 
 'The Painter's Daughters,' is the picture 
 of his own very nice little girls, the 
 elder of whom looks as though she 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 161 
 
 were capable of taking care of herself and 
 her small sister without the assistance of a 
 nursery-maid. She is perhaps two years 
 older than the little one, who has caught 
 sight of a butterfly, and starts towards it. 
 She is checked by her sister's detaining 
 hand. The latter looks a little wistfully 
 at the butterfly, as though she would 
 thoroughly enjoy a chase after it, and is 
 only deterred by the sense of responsibility 
 for her little sister, and perhaps the thought 
 that if they linger they may be late for tea. 
 These are not pretty children ; but they are 
 simple and unaffected, not dependent for 
 their attractiveness upon frocks and frills, 
 and quite free from self-consciousness. 
 
 If it is a hard matter to choose between 
 Reynolds and Gainsborough for the best 
 delineation of childhood, the introduction 
 of another competitor for fame, Romney, 
 makes choice no easier. Each of the trio 
 gives us something different, and the work 
 of each is equally worthy of our admira- 
 tion. Add to these the names of Lawrence, 
 
162 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Hoppner, and sundry other artists of their 
 era, and our task is made stiU more diffi- 
 cult. The exquisite grace of Romney, the 
 purity of Hoppner, the winsome vivacity 
 of Lawrence, all appeal to us as much as 
 does the expressiveness of Reynolds or the 
 variety of Gainsborough. 
 
 Romney's group of dancing children 
 is said to be the finest group of portraits 
 by his brush, and well deserves this 
 praise. About the truth of the like- 
 nesses we cannot judge, but those who 
 have seen the picture will remember that 
 the children are almost perfect, ideally 
 beautiful and natural. They are the 
 daughters and little son of the second 
 Earl Gower, afterwards first Marquis of 
 Stafford. The tall figure on the right 
 with the tambourine is that of their half- 
 sister. Lady Anne, who married the Rev. 
 Edward Vernon-Harcourt, afterwards Arch- 
 bishop of York. The little boy peeping 
 through the middle of the group became 
 in later life British Ambassador at St. 
 
PLATE XXXIX 
 
 PLAYMATES 
 
 KOMNEY 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 163 
 
 Petersburg. The little girls, taking them 
 from right to left, grew up and married, 
 becoming respectively Duchess of Beau- 
 fort, Lady Susanna Harrowby, and Lady 
 Georgiana Eliot. 
 
 Another lovely group by Romney, which 
 unfortunately we cannot- reproduce, is that 
 of Lady Warwick and her children. The 
 lady, dressed in white satin, is seated with 
 her right arm round her little daughter's 
 waist. She looks out of the picture as 
 though watching the spectator ; so does the 
 little boy, who stands apart from his mother 
 and sister, with a hoop in his hand. The 
 most charming figure in the group is that of 
 the little girl. She stands by her mother, 
 looking up into her face in a coaxing 
 fashion. Her cap falls back from her 
 sunny curls, and she is one of the prettiest 
 little maidens in the realm of art. Very 
 charming also is the little girl in 'Play- 
 mates' (Plate XXXIX.), who clasps in her 
 arms a tiny spaniel, while her brother holds 
 two other dogs in a leash; and another 
 
164 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 wonderfully attractive little maid is to be 
 seen in the National Gallery in "the pictnire 
 called « A Lady and Child.' 
 
 These four pictures may be said to 
 represent Romney's treatment of child- 
 hood, though there are many others, which 
 might interpret his thoughts on this 
 subject just as well. In his day Romney 
 rivalled Reynolds, but he was not 
 so essentially the friend of childhood. 
 Though he looked on children as pretty, 
 graceful little beings, he did not enter into 
 every changeful mood, every passing fancy 
 that Reynolds found so full of fascination. 
 This may also be said of Hoppner and 
 Lawrence. The former's picture, ' Love 
 me, love my dog' has not the same 
 child-spirit that we find in Reynolds' 
 ' Miss Bowles.' The little girl with her 
 arm thrown over the dog's back is not 
 thoroughly at home ; she is posing for the 
 picture and wondering whether she is 
 smUing too much or too little. The 
 charming ' Children Bathing,' a picture 
 
PLATE XL 
 
 PRINCESS CHARLOTTE 
 
 LAWRENCE 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 165 
 
 of Hoppner's own three laddies, is, on 
 the contrary, a veritable^ snapshot. Two 
 of the little boys are seated by the 
 edge of a shallow stream. The younger 
 is looking doubtfully at the water, and 
 pulling his arm reluctantly out of his 
 sleeve. The other child is stripped ready 
 for the plunge, and looks up with a mis- 
 chievous laugh at his eldest brother, who 
 still hesitates to undress and stands by in 
 an undecided fashion. 
 
 Another portrait group by Hoppner 
 represents 'The Douglas Children,' three 
 little girls and a boy in a landscape 
 flecked with sunshine. The eldest girl 
 and the boy wear expressions of solemn 
 amazement ; the second girl looks with 
 some amusement at the youngest, who 
 evidently does not enjoy the process of 
 having her portrait painted, and crouches 
 sulkily against her eldest sister's knee. 
 The sunlight filters through the branches 
 above their heads, and glitters on their 
 hair. 
 
166 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Both these pictures show Hoppner's 
 ibility in painting childhood to which, even 
 f he did not treat it with much originahty, 
 s given as much care and attention as 
 v^ere bestowed on his portraits of fashion- 
 .ble beauties. 
 
 Many of Lawrence's most famous 
 )ictures are portraits of children. The 
 ovely laughing Princess Charlotte with 
 ler bird perching on the hand she raises 
 ibove her head (Plate xl.) ; the handsome 
 even-year-old boy. Master Lambton (Plate 
 CLii.); the beautiful Countess Gower, after- 
 vards Duchess of Sutherland, and her little 
 laughter — all these are characteristic and 
 veil-known examples of Lawrence's art. 
 The picture he himself wished to be 
 cnown by is the portrait of the Calmady 
 jhildren, which has been engraved under 
 ;he title 'Nature' (Plate XLi.). At the time 
 vhen he painted this, his terms ranged 
 rom 150 to 600 guineas for a single 
 )ortrait. Two heads in one frame in- 
 jreased the price by two-thirds, so the 
 
PLATE XLI 
 
 NATURE 
 
 LAWRENCE 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 167 
 
 charge would have been in this case 
 250 guineas. Knowing, however, that 
 the Calmadys' means were small, Lawrence 
 asked only 200. At the mention of this 
 sum, Mrs. Cahnady's face fell, whereupon 
 the artist, without waiting for her to 
 say a word, said: 'Well, well, say 150 
 for the two little heads in a circle, and 
 some sky — and finish it at once.' The 
 result is his most charming picture of 
 childhood. During the painting of it 
 he frequently remarked that 'it would 
 be the best piece of the kind he had ever 
 painted'; and on its completion he had 
 no hesitation in saying it was his best 
 picture — one of the few he would wish 
 hereafter to be known by. 
 
 Though this is one of Lawrence's most 
 beautiful pictures of childhood, it is not 
 altogether his most characteristic. Law- 
 rence had been an infant prodigy, and 
 consequently a * show ' child. His tend- 
 ency was to make the children he painted 
 ' show ' children also. ' Master Lambton ' 
 
168 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 is one of these, and so is the ' Child with 
 a Kid,' which is a portrait of Lady 
 Georgiana Fane at the age of five. 
 Master Lambton is undoubtedly a hand- 
 some boy, but who would take him for 
 a child of seven ? No boy of his age would 
 pose in quite such a theatrical manner; 
 nor would he climb to his perch on a 
 rock without considerable damage to his 
 velvet suit. The affectation in the * Child 
 with a Kid,' though it takes a different 
 form, is just as remarkable. The little girl 
 is standing on the sloping bank of a 
 streamlet, while the kid paddles about in 
 the water at her side. Near her stands 
 a tub full of clothes, and the child herself 
 is dressed as scantily as the poorest peasant 
 child. A title does not necessarily imply 
 wealth, but presumably Lady Georgiana's 
 parents could afford to give her sufficient 
 clothing. We can scarcely believe that 
 Lawrence ever saw her running about 
 out of doors in such a costume as she 
 wears in the picture. Nevertheless she is 
 
PLATE XLII 
 
 MASTER LAMBTON 
 
 LAWKF.NCE 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 169 
 
 a very pretty little girl ; and though most 
 of Lawrence's child-pictures are character- 
 ised by a certain amount of affectation, 
 many of the children themselves are very 
 beautiful and full of life. 
 
 A number of other names wiU spring 
 to our minds as those of artists who 
 painted childhood with more or less 
 success. Etty, Northcote, and indeed 
 all the painters of this era, found this 
 subject fuU of attraction ; but the artists 
 with whom we have already dealt stand 
 unrivalled by any of their contemporaries 
 as delineators of the grace of infancy. 
 Their pictures furnish abundant evidence 
 of the high place held by childhood in 
 art. Formerly the subject of poetic 
 idealism, childhood was at this time 
 painted for its own sake; in various 
 aspects and varying moods it became 
 the favourite theme of English artists. 
 Reynolds and his contemporaries had set 
 the fashion — a fashion which, as we shall 
 see, shows no sign of changing. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 YET not in pictures alone do we find 
 these charming examples of baby- 
 hood. We search among long galleries of 
 Greek sculpture for that which in British 
 plastic art readily claims our notice. The 
 soft outlines of the child-form, the round 
 limbs and changeful expression, have in- 
 spired creations of the sculptor as well 
 as the painter. Imprisoned in stone by 
 the hand of Chantrey, two lovely children 
 lie sleeping in Lichfield Cathedral; form- 
 ing a monument, not only to the children, 
 but to the skill and sympathy of the artist 
 who with a wonderful instinct could make 
 even Death's darkness beautiful. 
 
 As in painting and sculpture, so in all 
 kinds of design are we confronted with 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 171 
 
 children. As represented by Flaxman 
 and the poet-painter Blake, they are dainty 
 little beings, losing none of their childish- 
 ness through being used to express poetic 
 ideals. Every page of the Songs of 
 Innocence — songs which breathe the 
 quaint wonderings of childhood in an 
 exquisite fashion — is decorated with tiny 
 elflike boys and girls to illustrate the 
 verses. Little fairy creatures flit about 
 the margins, and play hide-and-seek among 
 the headlines. Then we come upon 
 more deliberate pictures of children, akin 
 to those from Flaxman's pencil; little 
 groups sketched with an intimate know- 
 ledge of child character, and endowed 
 with an enduring charm. Side by side 
 with Flaxman and Blake we must place 
 Stothard, whose delineations of childhood 
 are always delightful. A modern writer, 
 speaking of Stothard's picture, 'Cupids 
 preparing for the Chase,' says : ' See 
 the fresh vivacity of this Cupid sounding 
 his horn ; the earnest and boyish sturdiness 
 
172 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 of the little fellow with his long staff 
 behind him; the grip which the curly- 
 headed boy in front has of the dog's 
 neck — ^it is all bold, simple, and alive : 
 while in the city, on a hill in the distance, 
 is the touch of poetic colour and mys- 
 terious suggestion that lifts the whole scene 
 into the region of romance.' Stothard 
 calls these Cupids, but they are just a 
 group of jolly little English children 
 masquerading, if you will, under the name. 
 For Cupid does not thrive in British 
 art. He ekes out a miserable ex- 
 istence on drop-scenes and various decora- 
 tions of the kind; his place in true art 
 is amply filled with real children who 
 smile happily from the canvas of every 
 artist. 
 
 Three of lesser note may be singled out 
 for their pictures of childhood. WestaU, 
 with his delightful portrait of Philip Sanson 
 when a child; Hilton, a Rubenesque 
 painter, with his allegorical ' Nature Blow- 
 ing Bubbles for her Children' (Plate xliii.); 
 
Q 
 
 £ 
 
 O 
 
 w 
 
 X 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 173 
 
 and Richard Parkes Bonington, with a scene 
 entitled 'Henri iv. and the Spanish Am- 
 bassador,' The first of these is the portrait 
 of a baby about two years old ; he stands 
 on the garden path in front of a rosebush, 
 his arms full of flowers, and stretches out 
 his little hand to pick a rose. It is quite 
 a simple and therefore charming picture. 
 Hilton's gives more scope for our imagina- 
 tion. He paints Nature with her youngest 
 babe lying on the ground near a spring 
 of water, and blowing bubbles which her 
 children try to catch; some run after 
 them ; some raise their hands to try and 
 stop their upward flight. It is an illustra- 
 tion of Crabbe's lines : — 
 
 ' Blow sportive bladders in the beamy sun. 
 And call them worlds ! And bid the greatest 
 
 show 
 More radiant colours in their worlds below : 
 Then as they break, the slaves of care reprove. 
 And tell them, such are all the toys they love.' 
 
 Bonington's 'Henri iv. and the Spanish 
 Ambassador ' is wonderfully vivid and full 
 
174 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 of life. The picture represents the King 
 in the act of creeping under the table in 
 order to escape from the onslaught of three 
 excited children. The little one in front 
 has seized the blue ribbon from which a 
 star, presumably an order, depends, and 
 vainly tries to stop his retreat. Not the 
 least riotous member of the party is the 
 dog, who seems thoroughly to enjoy the 
 romp. By the window stands the Spaniard, 
 looking on with amazement and not a 
 little contempt for the monarch who, 
 whatever he might do in private life, 
 could so far forget his dignity as to behave 
 in this fashion before the representative of 
 a neighbouring country. Yet this was 
 quite in keeping with the character of 
 Henri iv. Michelet, in his account of 
 Henri iv.'s entry into Paris in 1598, tells 
 us: 'Le roi ^tait si joyeux qu'il se con- 
 tenait k peine. Comme on vint au Louvre 
 lui parler d'affaires, " Je suis enivr^," dit-il. 
 "Je ne sais ce que vous dites, ni ce que 
 je dois vous dire." On s'^tonna de lui voir 
 

THE CHILD IN ART 175 
 
 contrefaire comme un bouffon le noble ejt 
 triste salut du due de Feria.'^ 
 
 Other painters of childhood are Wilkie 
 and Webster. Neither of these artists 
 depicted pretty children, nor did they con- 
 fine their ideas on childhood to the most 
 pleasing aspect of the subject. In common 
 with almost all his other pictures, Wilkie's 
 'Blind Fiddler' (PlatexLiv.) contains several 
 figures of children, and it is interesting to 
 note his treatment of them. In the arms 
 of the woman nearest to the musician is 
 a sleeping babe unaffected by the music. 
 The two little people in the middle of the 
 room, on the contrary, watch the blind 
 man with amazement. The younger child, 
 though still fingering the strings attached 
 to her toy wagon, has lost all her interest 
 in the plaything and stares at him open- 
 mouthed. The laughing, crowing child on 
 its mother's knee seems dancing up and 
 down with delight, and ready to accept 
 
 > Uicbeilet, Hiatoire de France. Paris, 1879. Vol. xii., 
 p. 338. 
 
176 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 the burly farmer's invitation to try her 
 unsteady steps upon the cottage floor. 
 The least pleasing of the children in the 
 composition is the boy to the right of the 
 picture with his tongue out. He stands 
 behind his mother's chair, has picked up the 
 poker, and, holding the bellows under his 
 chin, proceeds to mimic the blind fiddler. 
 
 In Webster's 'Dame School' are 
 several mischievous boys of this type. 
 The whole picture is characteristic. The 
 morning sunshine has tempted two or three 
 to dawdle on their way to school, and they 
 come creeping in, hoping to escape notice. 
 Sitting on benches all along the walls, and 
 in the middle of the schoolroom, are idle 
 little scholars. One boy points and makes 
 faces at the teacher ; another munches an 
 apple under cover of his book. A big 
 boy in a smock stands studying his lesson, 
 whilst a little fellow behind him seizes and 
 pulls at a tape which projects from his 
 collar. This causes extreme delight to his 
 companions, who are ready to welcome the 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 177 
 
 slightest diversion. Sitting back to back 
 on a stool in the middle of the room are 
 two children, a little girl pretending to 
 learn her lesson, and a boy with no inten- 
 tion of keeping up such a farce ; he leans 
 his chin on the edge of his book, and 
 occupies himself putting his tongue out at 
 his schoolfellows. At a table near the 
 window sits the schoolmistress, hearing the 
 lessons of one of the older boys. He 
 scratches his head in utter perplexity ; the 
 promptings of his companion who stands 
 behind with the book in his hand are of 
 no avail. The only child in the room who 
 is really busy is the little girl near the 
 window, whose attention is wholly absorbed 
 in threading a needle; all the others are 
 infected by a spirit of laziness and mis- 
 chief The scene is probably truthful 
 enough ; we might find a similar throng 
 similarly employed in any small village 
 school on a hot summer's day. 
 
 It is not the most pleasing presentment 
 of childhood, perhaps we might say, but, 
 
178 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 after all, real children are not at all times 
 little angels of goodness. Furthermore, 
 Wilkie and Webster stand for a period of 
 reaction ; when, after the grace and beauty 
 of the child had been depicted by the 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth century 
 artists, the painting of childhood became 
 general, and all aspects of the subject were 
 portrayed. Mr. Ruskin calls this, more 
 sua, - an extremely dark period,' caused 
 by 'the terrible action of our wealth, 
 compelling our painters to represent the 
 children of the poor as in wickedness and 
 misery.'^ But this did not continue for 
 long, and so bright are the periods pre- 
 ceding and following it, that we scarcely 
 remember such a time of darkness ever 
 existed. That childhood has regained its 
 place of honour is evinced by its repre- 
 sentation by modern artists. Whether 
 children are taken * naturally as what they 
 are, or artificially as types and figures of 
 something which they are not,' they make 
 
 » The Art of England (1887). 
 
HIS FIRST OFFENCt; 
 
 LADY STANLEY 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 179 
 
 an irresistible appeal to us. We look at the 
 life of the streets, at the children of poverty, 
 as painted by Lady Stanley and others, and 
 however much we may feel them to be 
 unlovable, we are convinced that they are 
 true and therefore pitiable. Look at the 
 ragged little urchin in the dock (Plate xlv.), 
 his shifty eyes scanning with a furtive 
 eagerness the faces of those around him. 
 It is his first offence, and, though he is 
 only a street arab, he awakens our sym- 
 pathy just as readily as does the little lady in 
 Briton Riviere's picture ' Sympathy'. She 
 has been banished from the drawing-room 
 for some childish fault and sits disconsolate 
 upon the staircase. Her blue eyes are full 
 of tears, and she takes no notice of the 
 sympathetic terrier who lays his head con- 
 fidingly on her shoulder. All the world 
 seems dark to this little maid ; she is too 
 sick at heart to appreciate the comfort 
 offered by her dumb friend, but he will 
 wait there patiently till his little mistress 
 gives him a kiss — the signal that she has 
 
180 THE CHILD IN ART ^ 
 
 banished her troubles and is ready to seek 
 admission at the door behind her. We 
 might meet with these children in everyday 
 life, and they arouse our deepest interest. 
 
 We should like to join the two little 
 girls in Sargent's ' Carnation Lily, Lily 
 Rose' (Plate xlvi.), as they stand in the 
 twilight among tangled masses of carna- 
 tions and lilies, lighting Chinese lanterns 
 which they hang on the rose bushes round 
 them ; and we could share with equal 
 enjoyment the fascinating occupation of 
 the little lad, whom Millais has depicted 
 blowing bubbles. Is not our curiosity 
 aroused to learn the fate of the baby in 
 Millais' picture of * A Flood ' ? We see 
 a vast tract of water, and floating in the 
 foreground a wooden cradle. Its little 
 occupant is unconscious of any danger, but 
 the black kitten on the prow of this 
 strange vessel yells with discomfort and 
 fright. Will these little wayfarers ever be 
 picked up, we wonder ! and we even glance 
 over the rest of the picture hoping that a 
 
PLATE XL VI 
 
 CARNATION LILY, LILY ROSE 
 
 SAKGENT 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 181 
 
 rescuing party may be in sight. Is not our 
 sympathy awakened by the patience of the 
 little maid listening to her first sermon? 
 and how readily we feel with the child 
 when we see in the companion picture 
 that half-way through the second, her 
 head has dropped forward and she is 
 dreaming of things easier to understand 
 than the preacher's discourse (Plate xlvii.). 
 What Richter was to the child in 
 German art, and Fr^re to the child in the 
 art of France, was Arthur Stocks to the 
 child in English art. Millais, who is 
 almost unrivalled in contemporary art for 
 his painting of childhood, would still have 
 been accounted great had he never painted 
 a child. Stocks' reputation rests almost 
 entirely on his wonderful delineation of 
 childhood. His love for children led him 
 to paint them with the same sympathy as 
 did Richter or Fr^re; like these, too, his 
 models were little ones of the poorer 
 classes. Sweet shy little maids with whom 
 he had made friends, and who had learned 
 
182 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 to love and trust him ; sturdy eager boys 
 like the lad in one of his larger pictures, 
 'Soldiers Past and Future,' where the 
 veteran of many campaigns lives ove/again 
 his experiences as the child reads aloud 
 stories of the battlefield. Stocks knew 
 the heart of a child and how to reach it ; 
 without which knowledge none can be a 
 true painter of childhood. Many have 
 painted children without it, and so have 
 failed to make a lasting appeal to the 
 dormant child-spirit which lies somewhere 
 in each grown-up heart ; but with Millais' 
 children we are babies again, as with those 
 of Reynolds and others of his time. We 
 feel ourselves part owners of the little 
 shell which the children in Poynter's 
 ' Outward Bound ' have launched upon the 
 deep. These two charming little girls are 
 perched upon a projecting ledge of rock. 
 One leans over the edge to watch the 
 progress of the fragile craft'which boasts a 
 feather for its sail ; the other sits twisting 
 up her curly hair and tucking it under her 
 
PLATE XLVn 
 
 MY SECOND SERMON 
 
 MILLAIS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 183 
 
 red cap. Around them lie some little 
 shells and various Oriental-looking drap- 
 eries, while on a rock below reposes some 
 fishing-tacfele. 
 
 All these pictures of which we have 
 spoken are full of interest to us, and half 
 their charm lies in the perfect simplicity of 
 subject. The children seem to live and 
 breathe and act as they would in real life ; 
 we can almost fancy that we have met 
 them there. Have we not seen many a 
 cottage such as La Thangue shows us in 
 'The Man with the Scythe'? (Plate xlviii.). 
 This picture represents a perfectly simple 
 scene, and all the actors are such as we 
 might meet with in any village. 
 
 The little invalid child has been carried 
 outside the cottage door and propped up 
 by a cushion in the big chair, that she may 
 enjoy the fresh air without fatigue. The 
 anxious mother leaves her work occasion- 
 ally and comes to look at the child. To- 
 wards sunset a labourer, returning from his 
 day's work, passes the garden gate and 
 
184 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 looks in at the little sufferer. His smock 
 is flung over his shoulder like a shroud and 
 he grasps a sickle in his hand-^symbolic, 
 perhaps, of the relentless reaper. Death. 
 At this moment the mother comes out, 
 and seeing the child's drooping head, bends 
 over it in sudden fear. The little life has 
 passed ; another flower has been added to 
 the eternal harvest, the happiness of which 
 is in part foreshadowed by Holman Hunt's 
 ' Triumph of the Innocents.' 
 
 This picture represents the Flight into 
 Egypt, under starry skies and through 
 fields of corn. On the distant hills watch- 
 fires are burning, warning Joseph, who 
 looks anxiously round, that their pursuers 
 are still vigilant. The fugitives are cross- 
 ing a narrow stream, on the further side of 
 which are several of the little martyrs. 
 Another group of children surrounds the 
 ass and its foal, and to them the child 
 Christ turns with a smile of welcome. In 
 his hand are some ears of corn typical of 
 the Bread of Life, or bearing allusion to 
 
PLATE XL VI 11 
 
 THE MAN WITH THE SCYTHE 
 
 LA THANGUE 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 185 
 
 the pretty legend in connection with the 
 Flight. The story runs that as the Holy 
 Family passed through a field on the way 
 to Egypt, some men were sowing it with 
 wheat. Joseph instructed them that if 
 Herod's soldiers should come and inquire at 
 what time the fugitives had passed that way, 
 they should answer, ' While we were sow- 
 ing this corn.' The soldiers came shortly 
 afterwards, but the corn had grown up so 
 miraculously that they turned back think- 
 ing pursuit useless. Behind the Virgin 
 and Child are two or three of the 
 Innocents, who have not yet awakened to 
 the joy of resurrection and still bear on 
 their features traces of the agony of their 
 martyrdom ; unlike a child in the central 
 group, who looks at the sword-rent in his 
 little shirt and seems surprised to find no 
 corresponding wound in his body. He 
 and his little companions dance along with 
 happiness; while the foremost group of 
 Innocents is animated by a graver joy. 
 The picture is one of radiant gladness. 
 
186 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Though we know these children to be little 
 angels, we cannot forget that they were 
 once real children ; though we feel them to 
 be children, we are reminded by the sym- 
 bolism in which the picture is rich, that 
 they are also types. In none of the Italian 
 pictures do we meet with quite the same 
 thought. The Italian cherubs come of 
 another race. Types they may be, but of 
 some purified souls, not of happy innocent 
 children who have entered into possession 
 of their heavenly heritage. They have 
 known no other occupation, have had no 
 more human interest than their singing of 
 psalms. 
 
 Yet though these Italian cherubs sink 
 into comparative insignificance beside the 
 hundreds of children in British art, they 
 are of some importance in their national 
 art as illustrating the treatment of child- 
 hood by the Italian painters. It is first 
 through pictures of the Christ child, and 
 secondly through the attendant cherubim, 
 that we have been able to trace the slowly 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 187 
 
 changing thoughts of the Southern mind 
 concerning childhood. We have watched 
 the development of the child-form in Italian 
 art, from a mere puppet to a creation of 
 great beauty, but it has been mainly 
 through examples of the Holy Family, 
 through crowds of little angels, and their 
 distant relative Cupid, that we have fol- 
 lowed the gradual change. Crossing the 
 Alps, we have found a wider range of sub- 
 ject and a wholly different style of art. 
 Unhandicapped by the tyranny of tradi- 
 tion, the Dutch and Flemish artists painted 
 children as they saw them in real life, and 
 we have seen how much more true to the 
 child-spirit are their pictures than those of 
 the Italians, who had to fight their way 
 from the ideal type to the freedom of 
 reality. The Northern artists cared not so 
 much for the actual prettiness of childhood 
 as for the infinite amount of character and 
 individuality lying undeveloped in every 
 child ; to portray this was their chief aim 
 in painting children, and admirably have 
 
188 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 they succeeded. We have found in 
 Spanish art two distinct lines of thought : 
 one, as represented by Murillo, being akin 
 to the Italian ideals ; the other, as de- 
 veloped by Velasquez, having more affinity 
 with those of Flanders. The child in art 
 was moulded by the first into a phantom, 
 or a human monkey ; by the second into a 
 being of character, though of considerably 
 less charm than when painted by Flemish 
 artists. Neither treatment was entirely 
 satisfactory. Even greater disappointment 
 first met us in French art. We have seen 
 the little fashion-plates of Watteau, and 
 noticed the development, in spite of many 
 impediments, of a nobler conception of 
 childhood. 
 
 But we have searched the chief schools 
 of art, and failed to find a child that com- 
 pletely satisfies our ideal. One more 
 avenue lies open to us. The art of Eng- 
 land supplies the object of our search. The 
 beauty of Italian babyhood and the gradu- 
 ally unfolding character of the Dutch 
 
PLATE XLIX 
 
 GOOD LUCK TO YOUR FISHING! 
 
 WATTS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 189 
 
 children are united in perfect harmony 
 in the pictures of little English boys and 
 girls. Whether they are children of the 
 eighteenth century, or of the present day, 
 they concentrate in themselves the truest 
 beauty of form and character. This essence 
 of perfect childhood we have found first in 
 the pictures by Reynolds. Nor in our own 
 day has the harmonious ideal been lost, 
 and the portrayal of childhood in its inno- 
 cence and simplicity is still one of the 
 glories of British art. 
 
 If, in the eighteenth century, Reynolds 
 was the principal exponent of the sweetness 
 and dignity of childhood, the climax, in our 
 own times, has been reached by the treat- 
 ment of Watts. We may admire the 
 dainty little Cupid intent on his occupa- 
 tion of fishing in the dancing wavelets, 
 (Plate XLix.), and fully appreciate the 
 tenderness with which he paints a sweet 
 sleeping baby, but there is a message in his 
 child pictures, in addition to the innocence 
 common to the children of Reynolds. Not 
 
190 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 content with merely painting the perfect 
 physical child, Watts makes the child 
 become the embodiment of an ideal, fore- 
 shadowing in its undeveloped form the 
 renewal of hope and life ; as in ' Promises,' 
 in which picture the flowers of spring 
 and the bud of humanity suggest the full 
 significance of the title. 
 
 Even in the presence of Death this pro- 
 phetic vision concerning childhood loses 
 none of its truth and comfort. It seems a 
 . contradiction to recall the figure of Love 
 vainly striving to bar out Death, and ' the 
 silent angel of pity' crowning Innocence 
 ere the frosts have blighted or the sun has 
 scorched the tender purity of infancy : yet 
 to the weary scientist, resting in his chair 
 with all the symbols of life's interests 
 around him, there comes the Messenger 
 (Plate L.) bearing a little child and bring- 
 ing its twofold message. The unsatisfied 
 student is assured that in future genera- 
 tions, as personified in the child, his dreams 
 for science and art will reach fulfilment; 
 
THE MESSENGER 
 
 WATTS 
 
THE CHILD IN ART 191 
 
 to the man's heart comes the echo of the 
 words, ever old and ever new : ' Except 
 ye become as little children ye shall 
 in no wise enter into the Kingdom of 
 heaven.' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adobation op the* Magi 
 
 (Ghirlandajo), 40 
 
 (Rembrandt); 114 
 
 Age of Innocence, 153, ld4, 
 
 155 
 Alchemist, The, 104 
 Angel, The Guardian, 134 
 Angels' Heads, 153 
 Angelo, Michael, 40, 58, 59, 
 
 76,83 
 Ansidei Madonna, The, 69 
 Art, influence of the Church 
 
 on, 12, 30, 126, 136 
 influenced by religious 
 
 beliefs, 2, 3 
 Assumption of the Virgin 
 
 (Raphael), 64 
 
 (Titian), 90 
 
 Assyrian Art, 4 
 
 Bacchus and Ariadne, 91, 
 
 106 
 BaiUie Family, portrait of 
 
 the, 158, 160 
 Baptism of Christ, 36 
 Baroccio, 94, 95 
 Bai-tolommeo, Fra, 49 
 Beautiful Gate, The (cartoon), 
 
 75 
 
 Beggar boys, 131-133, 179 
 
 Bellini, 16, 62-56, 63 
 
 Beltraffio, 48 
 
 Bertucci of Faenza, 80, 81 
 
 Betrothal, The, 129 
 
 Blake, 17 
 
 Blind Fiddler, The, 176 
 
 Blue Boy, The, 158, 159 
 
 Bor^ngton, Richard Parkes, 
 
 173 
 Boothby, Penelope, portrait 
 
 of, 162 
 Botticelli, 33-36, 41, 61 
 Bouguereau, 146, 147 
 Bourbon, Fraufoise Marie de, 
 
 portrait of, 136 
 Bowles, portrait of Miss, 161, 
 
 162, 164 
 Boy in Red, portrait of a (Le 
 
 Brun), 142 
 
 Portrait of a (Maes), 118 
 
 Boys blowing Bubbles, 122 
 British Art, The Child in, 
 . 149-191, 186, 188, 189 
 Bronze at St. Antony's, 
 
 Padua, 39 
 Brueghel, Pieter, 104 
 Bubbles, 180 
 Buttery, The, 120 
 
 193 
 
194 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Byzantine Art, 11-17 
 Byzantine ideal, 12, 19, 20 
 
 Carnation Lily, Lily Rose, 
 
 180 
 Carlo Dolci, 94 
 Carlos, Don Balthazar, por- 
 traits of, 127, 128 
 Cartoons, Raphael's, 75-77 
 Casa Tempi Madonna, 68 
 Chantrey, 170 
 Characteristics of childhood, 
 
 76, 77, 119 
 Charlotte, portrait of Prin- 
 cess, 166 
 Cheruhs, 28, 52, 53, 62-67, 
 86, 87, 89-92, 96-99, 106, 
 186, 187 
 Child-genius, 80 
 Child learning to read, 144 
 
 with a kid, 168 
 
 Children Bathing, 164 
 
 of Charles i., 108-111 
 
 of the Shell, The, 133 
 
 Christ at the Column, 130 
 Blessing Little Chil- 
 dren, 119 
 Christian Art, Early, 10 
 Christianity, influence of, on 
 
 Childhood in Art, 9, 149 
 Church, influence of, on Art, 
 
 136 
 Cimahue, 18, 20-23 
 Circumcision, The, 58 
 Conception, The Immaculate, 
 135 
 
 Cornelius, 123 
 
 Coronation of the Virgin, 
 
 The, 33, 58 
 Correggio, 83-89, 93-95 
 Costa, Lorenzo, 62, 80 
 Cottage Door, The, 158 
 Country Children, 157 
 Court of a Dutch House, 120, 
 
 121 
 Crabbe, quotation from, 173 
 Credi, 37, 42, 43 
 Crivelli, 51 
 Cupid, 7, 85-87, 96, 106, 146, 
 
 172, 187, 189 
 Cupids preparing for the 
 
 Chase, 171 
 
 Dame School, The, 176 
 Dauphin, portraits of the, 142 
 Da Vinci, Leonardo, 16, 36, 
 
 44-46, 48, 79 
 Death crowning Innocence, 
 
 190 
 De Hooch, Pieter, 120 
 Delaroche, 143, 144 
 Delia Robbia, Andrea, 40 
 
 Luca, 38-40, 63 
 
 Del Sarto, Andrea, 82, 83 
 Devonshire, Duchess of, and 
 
 Child, 152 
 Dionysus, 6 
 Donatello, 38, 39, 63 
 Douglas Children, portrait of 
 
 the, 166 
 Drouais, 142 
 Duccio, 22, 23 
 
INDEX 
 
 195 
 
 Durer, Albrecht, 97-99, 123 
 
 Life of, quoted, 99 
 
 Dutch Art, 116-122, 187 
 House, Court of, 120, 
 
 121 
 Housewife, The, 118, 
 
 120 
 ideal, 103, 104, 122, 123 
 
 Early Christian Art, 10 
 
 Edward vi., portraits of, 99, 
 100 
 
 Egyptian Art, The Child in, 
 4 
 
 Eirene and Ploutos, 6 
 
 Elizabeth, portrait of Prin- 
 cess, 112 
 
 Enthronement of the Virgin, 
 The, 49 
 
 Eros, 7-9, 63, 106 
 
 Etty, 169 
 
 Fair-haired Child, The, 138 
 Family Group (Holbein), 
 
 100 
 
 (Rubens), 107 
 
 Fane, Portrait of Lady Geor- 
 
 giana, 168 
 Feast of St. Nicholas, The, 
 
 115 
 Ferrarese School, 49-61, 66 
 Filippino Lippi, 41, 60 
 First Oflfence, His, 179 
 Flaxman, 171 
 Flemish Art, 105-114, 122, 
 
 123, 187, 188 
 
 Flight into Egypt, Legend 
 
 concerning the, 185 
 Flinck, Govert, 116 
 Flood, The, 180 
 Fra Angelico, 31, 32, 60 
 Fra Filippo Lippi, 32, 33 
 Fragonard, 138, 139 
 Prancia, 60-62 
 Frari Madonna, The, 62, 63 
 French Art, 136-148, 183 
 Frere, Edouard, 146, 181 
 Frescoes : Convent of San 
 
 Paolo at Parma, 86, 86 
 
 Scuola di San Rocco, 
 
 92 
 
 Padua, 24-26 
 
 Vatican, 66 
 
 Gaddi, 26 
 
 Gainsborough, 156-162, 164 
 
 contrasted with Rey- 
 nolds, 166, 167, 159, 160 
 
 German Art, 97-103, 122-125 
 Ghirlandajo, 36, 40, 41 
 Giotto, 23-27 
 Girl, Study of a Young, 140 
 
 with an Apple, 141 
 
 Good Shepherd, The, 133 
 Gounod, Francois Louis, por- 
 trait of, 142 
 Gower, portrait of the chil- 
 dren of Earl, 162, 163 
 Grandi, Eroole, 60, 56 
 Greek Art, The Child in, 1, 
 
 4-9, 170 
 Greuze, 140, 141, 146 
 
196 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Grief, Study of, 141 
 Guardian Angela The, 134 
 Gwatkin, portrait of Theo- 
 phila, 155 
 
 Havbrfieu), portraitof Miss, 
 
 160 
 Heads of Angels, 15S, 155 
 Henri iv. and the Spanish 
 
 Ambassador, 173 
 Hermes and Dionysos, 6 
 HUton, 172, 173 
 Hogai^th, 149, 160 
 
 quoted, 28, 29, 65 
 
 Holbein, 99-101, 123, 149 
 Holbein's family, portrait of, 
 
 100 
 Holland, The Child in the Art 
 
 of, 149 
 Holman Hunt, 184 
 Holy Family (Baroceio), 94, 
 
 95 
 
 (Botticelli), 35 
 
 (Del Sarto), 82 
 
 (Michael Angelo), 83 
 
 (Murillo), 134 
 
 (Perugino), 59 
 
 (Raphael), 71-76 
 
 (Titian), 89, 90 
 
 Hoppner, 162, 164-166 
 Horus, 4 
 
 Immaculate CoNCEPTiON,The, 
 
 134 
 Infant Samuel, The, 153, 155, 
 
 156 
 
 Influence of the Church on 
 
 Art, 136 
 Innocence, The Age of, 153- 
 
 156 
 
 (Bouguereau), 146 
 
 (Greuze), 140, 146 
 
 Inquisition, influence of the 
 
 Spanish, 126 
 Institution of Prayer, 130 
 Italian Art, The Child in, 19- 
 
 96, 123, 149, 186-188 
 
 Jacob blessing his Grand- 
 children, 114 
 
 John, St., and a Lamb, 133, 
 134 
 
 in the Wilderness, 166, 
 
 156 
 
 L'AssAUT, 146 
 
 La Belle Jardiniere, 71, 72 
 
 Lady and Child, portrait of, 
 163 
 
 Lamb, St. John and a, 133, 
 134 
 
 Lambton, portrait of Master, 
 166-168 
 
 Lancret, 146 
 
 La Notte, 87 
 
 La Thangue, 183 
 
 Latour, 142 
 
 Lawrence, 161, 162, 164, 166- 
 169 
 
 affectation of his child- 
 portraits, 167-169 
 
 Le Brun, 136 
 
INDEX 
 
 197 
 
 Le Briuij Madame^ 142, 143 
 and her daughter, por- 
 trait of, 143 
 Lecky on The Infant Samuel, 
 
 153 
 Lely, Sir Peter, 112, 149 
 
 compared with Van 
 
 Dyck, 113 
 Lepicie, 142 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 16, 36, 
 
 44-46, 48, 79 
 lippi, Filippino, 41, 60 
 
 Fra Filippo, 32, 83 
 
 Louis XV., portrait of, as a 
 
 chUd, 136 
 Love and Death, 190 
 Love me, love my dog, 164 
 Luini, 63, 79 
 
 Madonna and Cheld (Botti- 
 celli), 33 
 
 (Cimahue), 20-23 
 
 (attributed to Credi), 
 
 43,44 
 
 (Duccio), 22, 23 
 
 (Filippino Lippi), 42 
 
 (Fra Filippo Lippi), 33 
 
 (Francia), 60 
 
 (Mantegna), 61 
 
 (Margaritone), 16, 22, 
 
 23 
 
 (Verrocchio), 36 
 
 Madonna Casa Tempi, 63 
 
 da Foligno, 66, 67 
 
 del Gran' Duca, 68 
 
 della Cesta, 83 
 
 Madonna della Misericordia, 
 49 
 
 della Sedia, 73,-74 
 
 ■ deUa Vittoria, 61 
 
 del Passeggio, 77 
 
 Enthroned, 60 
 
 of the Goldfinch, 7l, 
 
 72 
 
 of the Pomegranate, 63, 
 
 64 
 
 of the Rocks, 46-47 
 
 of the Rose Trellis, 79 
 
 of the Star, 31 ^ 
 
 Sistine, 78 
 
 Terra Nuova, 71 
 
 with the Thistlefinch, 
 
 68 
 Magnificat, The, 36 
 Mantegna, 60, 61 
 Man with the Scythe, The, 
 
 183 
 Margarita Maria, portrait of 
 
 the Infanta, 127-129 
 Margaritone, 12, 16, 20 
 Massacre of the Innocents, 
 
 26 
 Medallions at the Foundling 
 
 Hospital, Florence, 40 
 Melencolia, 93 
 Meninas, Las, 129 
 Messenger, The, 190 
 Meyer Madonna, The, 101 
 Michael Angelo, 40, 58, 69, 
 
 76 
 Michelet quoted, 174 
 Mignard, 136 
 
198 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Millais, 180-182 
 
 MiUet, 145] 
 
 Modesty, 140 
 
 MurUlo, 126, 127, 131-135, 
 188 
 
 contrasted with Rey- 
 nolds, 156 
 
 Music Party, The, 137 
 
 Nativitt, The, 43 
 Nature, 166 
 
 blowing Bubbles for her 
 
 Children, 172 
 Northcote, 169 
 
 Obcagna, 27 
 
 Organ Gallery by Delia 
 
 Robbia, 38, 39 
 Outward Bound, 182 
 Overbeck, 123 
 
 Pagan Art, The Child in, 
 
 1-9 
 Painter's Daughters, The, 
 
 160 
 Perugino, 16, 37, 59, 60, 64, 
 
 68 
 Pitcher, The Broken, 141 
 Playmates, 163 
 Ploutos, 6 
 Pollajuolo, 36 
 Portrait of a boy in red, 
 
 115 
 
 of a girl, 115 
 
 of a young girl, 115 
 
 Poynter, 182 
 
 Prayer, The Institution of, 
 
 130 
 Presentation of the Virgin, 
 
 25 
 -^ — of Christ in the Temple, 
 
 25 
 Princes in the Tower, The, 
 
 144 
 Promises, 190 
 Prud'hon, 143 
 Puppies, 143 
 
 Raphael, 16, 49, 69, 64r78, 
 89, 93-95 
 
 characteristics of his 
 
 second period, 70 
 
 influenced by Michael 
 
 Angelo, 75 
 influenced by Perugino, 
 
 68 
 his treatment of child- 
 hood during his third 
 
 period, 75, 76 
 Rembrandt, 114, 119 
 Renaissance, The Early, 19- 
 
 29 
 Resurrection, The, 64 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 150, 
 
 151, 156, 157, 162, 164, 
 
 169, 182, 189 
 
 contrasted with Gains- 
 borough, 166, 167, 159, 
 160 
 
 contracted with Murillo, ' 
 
 156 
 Richter, Dr., quoted, 80 
 
INDEX 
 
 199 
 
 Richterj Ludwig, 124, 125, 
 
 145, 181 
 Riviere, Briton, 179 
 Roman Art, The Child in, 
 
 7,8 
 Romney, 151, 161-164 
 Rossetti, D. G., quoted, 47 
 Rubens, 105-108 
 Rubens' ideal children, 106 
 
 family, portrait of, 107 
 
 Rubens and Van Dyck, 108 
 -. Nicholas, portrait of, 
 
 107 
 
 Ruskin quoted, 1, 6, 9, 27, 
 63,, 75, 92, 103, 153, 154, 
 178 
 
 Rustic Children, 157 
 
 Sacrifice at Lystba (car- 
 toon), 77 
 Samuel, The Infant, 153 
 Sanson, portrait of Philip, 
 
 172 
 San Zaccaria Madonna, 53 
 Sargent, 180 
 Sermon, My First, 181 
 Shepherd, The Good, 133 
 Signorelli, Luca, 68, 59 
 Singing gallery by Donatello, 
 
 39 
 Sistine Madonna, 78 
 Soldiers Past and Future, 
 
 182 
 Songs of Innocence, 171 
 Spanish Art, The Child in, 
 126-136, 188 
 
 Stanley, Lady, 179 
 
 Steen, Jan, 116 
 
 Stephens, F. G., quoted, 
 
 150 
 Stocks, Arthur, 181, 182 
 Stothard, Arthur, 171, 172 
 Study of Grief, 141 
 
 of a Young Girl, 140 
 
 Suffolk, portraits of the sons 
 
 of the Earl of, 100 
 Symonds, J. A., quoted, 69 
 Sympathy, 179 
 
 Tintoretto, 92 
 Titian, 89, 93, 94, 106 
 Triumph of Death, The, 
 28 
 
 of the Innocents, 184 
 
 Tura, Cosimo, 49-61 
 
 Van Dyck, Anthony, 108- 
 
 112, 127, 149, 169 
 
 and Rubens, 108 
 
 and Lely, 113 
 
 Vasari, 59 
 
 ^■^ quoted, 21 
 
 Velasquez, 126-131, 188 
 
 Veronese, 92 
 
 Verrocchio, 36-38 
 
 Vierge aux Rochers, La, 45, 
 
 46 
 
 Consolatrice, La, 147 
 
 Virgin Enthroned (Francia), 
 
 61 
 (Tura), 49, 50 
 
200 
 
 THE CHILD IN ART 
 
 Virgin, the Rose of Heaven, 
 61 
 
 Warwick, Lady, and her 
 children, 163 
 
 Watteau, 136-138, 145, 188 
 Watts, 189-191 
 Wehster, 175, 176, 178 
 Westall, 172 
 Wilkie, 176, 176 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press