On the other hand, an example of the treatment of the adorable Madonna is that of San Sisto, in the Dresden gallery. It is not necessary to dwell on the details of a picture which rises at once to every one’s mind. The circumstance of innumerable angels’ heads, of the attendant S. Sixtus and S. Barbara, the sweep of cloud and drapery, the suggestion of depths below and of heights above, of heaven itself listening at the Madonna’s feet,—all these translate the mother and babe with ineffable sweetness and dignity into a heavenly place, and make them the centre of the spiritual universe. Yet in all this Raphael has rested his art in no elaborate use of celestial machinery. He has taken the simple, elemental relation, and invested it with its eternal properties. He gives not a supernatural and transcendent mother and child, but a glorified humanity. Therefore it is that this picture, and with it the other great Madonnas of Raphael, may be taken entirely away from altar and sanctuary, and placed in the shrine of the household. The universality of the appeal is seen in the unhesitating adoption of the Sistine Madonna as an expression of religious art by those who are even antagonistic to the church which called it forth. IV The concentration of Raphael’s genius to so large an extent upon the subject of the Madonna was not a mere accident of the time, nor, when classic forms were renewing their power, was it a solecism. The spirit of the Renaissance entered profoundly into Raphael’s work, and determined powerfully the direction which it took. When he was engaged upon purely classic themes, it is interesting to see how frequently he turned to the forms of children. His decorative work is rich with the suggestion which they bring. One may observe the graceful figures issuing from the midst of flower and leaf; above all, one may note how repeatedly he presents the myth of Amor, and recurs to the Amorini, types of childhood under a purely naturalistic conception. The child Jesus and the child Amor appear side by side in the creations of Raphael’s genius. In the great Renaissance, of which he was so consummate an exponent, the ancient classic world and the Christian met in these two types of childhood: the one a childhood of the air, unmixed with good or evil; the other a childhood of heaven and earth, proleptic of earthly conflict, proleptic also of heavenly triumph. The coincidence is not of chance. The new world into which men were looking was not, as some thought, to be in the submersion of Christianity and a return to Paganism, nor, as others, in a stern asceticism, which should render Christianity an exclusive church, standing aloof from the world as from a thing wholly evil. There was to be room for truth and love to dwell together, and the symbol of this union was the child. Raphael’s Christ child drew into its features a classic loveliness; his Amor took on a Christ-like purity and truthfulness.