The perpetual introduction of St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and other relatives of the Virgin (always avoided in a Madonna dell Trono), would compose what is called a Holy Family, but that the presence of sainted personages whose existence and history belong to a wholly different era--St. Catherine, St. George, St. Francis, or St. Dominick--takes the composition out of the merely domestic and historical, and lifts it at once into the ideal and devotional line of art. Such a group cannot well be styled a _Sacra Famiglia_; it is a _Sacra Conversazione_ treated in the pastoral and lyrical rather than the lofty epic style. In this subject the Venetians, who first introduced it, excel all other painters. There is no example by Raphael. The German and Flemish painters who adopted this treatment were often coarse and familiar; the later Italians became flippant and fantastic. The Venetians alone knew how to combine the truest feeling for nature with a sort of Elysian grace. I shall give a few examples. 1. In a picture by Titian (Dresden Gal.), the Virgin is seated on a green bank enamelled with flowers. She is simply dressed like a _contadina_, in a crimson tunic, and a white veil half shading her fair hair. She holds in her arms her lovely Infant, who raises his little hand in benediction. St. Catherine kneels before him on one side; on the other, St. Barbara. St. John the Baptist, not as a child, and the contemporary of our Saviour, but in likeness of an Arcadian shepherd, kneels with his cross and his lamb--the _Ecce Agnus Dei_, expressed, not in words, but in form. St. George stands by as a guardian warrior. And St. Joseph, leaning on his stick behind, contemplates the group with an air of dignified complacency. 2. There is another instance also from Titian. In a most luxuriant landscape thick with embowering trees, and the mountains of Cadore in the background, the Virgin is seated on a verdant bank; St. Catherine has thrown herself on her knees, and stretches out her arms to the divine Child in an ecstasy of adoration, in which there is nothing unseemly or familiar. At a distance St. John the Baptist approaches with his Lamb. 3. In another very similar group, the action of St. Catherine is rather too familiar,--it is that of an eider sister or a nurse: the young St. John kneels in worship. 4. Wonderfully fine is a picture of this class by Palma, now in the Dresden Gallery. The noble, serious, sumptuous loveliness of the Virgin; the exquisite Child, so thoughtful, yet so infantine; the manly beauty of the St. John; the charming humility of the St. Catherine as she presents her palm, form one of the most perfect groups in the world. Childhood, motherhood, maidenhood, manhood, were never, I think, combined in so sweet a spirit of humanity.[1]