WOMAN IN ART
Relative to the women who emerged from the brush of Raphael, we quote from one of his letters to his friend, Count Castiglione: "I should think myself master if it (his painting of Galatea) possessed one-half of the merits of which you write To paint a picture truly beautiful, I should see many beautiful forms but beautiful women being rare, I avail myself of certain ideas which come into my mind. If this idea has any excellence in art I know not, though I labor heartily to acquire it."
Not all painters of saints and Madonnas were as spiritual as was Raphael or as gifted in ideals as he.
One of the most human, hence motherly, of his mothers, is called "The Madonna della Sedia," and the incident that has sometimes accompanied the enjoyment of the picture in the Pitti Palace, savors of a fact. In brief, the artist, sauntering through a bit of woodland for recreation, happened upon the hut of a woodman. A mother was hushing her little child to sleep; an older child was playing at the doorstep. The artist paused and asked permission to make a drawing of the babe in her arms. Having no material with which to work, he wandered further and found a part of a barrel head; then stirring the ashes where the family fire had been, he found a bit of charcoal and made his sketch. It is one of the most loved of all his Madonnas.
Let us see what later painters show concerning the influence of the Mother and Child. Another incident of the early Christian centuries leads to the subject of the painting.
A Christian woman had an only son for whom she worked and prayed, fearing the influence of the wild youths of Alexandria during his adolescent years. One day he told his mother he was going to Rome with a number of the "fellows." Her efforts and entreaty made him the more determined to go. She knew enough of the wickedness in that city of crime to fear its result on the boy she had loved and prayed for since his birth. Her heart was breaking, and one night she went out on the sea shore, and kneeling on the sand, poured out her heart in supplication that God would not permit her boy ,to go to Rome. Above all things the mother prayed that he should become a Christian, and wanted him where she could shield him from evil influences. She prayed all night in her agony of soul, so strong was her mother love and her faith. In the morning she learned that he had sailed. Her son was a scholar, and the lure of study was the real object of his journey. In time, this object took him to Milan where he heard Ambrose, the great father of the Christian Church, preach again and again. It led to the
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