These groups, so numerous, and of such perpetual recurrence, that they alone form a large proportion of the contents of picture galleries and the ornaments of churches, are, after all, a modern innovation in sacred art. What may be called the _domestic_ treatment of the history of the Virgin cannot be traced farther back than the middle of the fifteenth century. It is, indeed, common to class all those pictures as Holy Families which include any of the relatives of Christ grouped with the Mother and her Child; but I must here recapitulate and insist upon the distinction to be drawn between the _domestic_ and the _devotional_ treatment of the subject; a distinction I have been careful to keep in view throughout the whole range of sacred art, and which, in this particular subject, depends on a difference in sentiment and intention, more easily felt than set down in words. It is, I must repeat, a _devotional_ group where the sacred personages are placed in direct relation to the worshippers, and where their supernatural character is paramount to every other. It is a _domestic_ or an _historical_ group, a Holy Family properly so called, when the personages are placed in direct relation to each other by some link of action or sentiment, which expresses the family connection between them, or by some action which has a dramatic rather than a religious significance. The Italians draw this distinction in the title "_Sacra Conversazione_" given to the first-named subject, and that of "_Sacra Famiglia_" given to the last. For instance, if the Virgin, watching her sleeping Child, puts her finger on her lip to silence the little St. John; there is here no relation between the spectator and the persons represented, except that of unbidden sympathy: it is a family group; a domestic scene. But if St. John, looking out of the picture, points to the Infant, "Behold the Lamb of God!" then the whole representation changes its significance; St. John assumes the character of precursor, and we, the spectators, are directly addressed and called upon to acknowledge the "Son of God, the Saviour of mankind." If St. Joseph, kneeling, presents flowers to the Infant Christ, while Mary looks on tenderly (as in a group by Raphael), it is an act of homage which expresses the mutual relation of the three personages; it is a Holy Family: whereas, in the picture by Murillo, in our National Gallery, where Joseph and Mary present the young Redeemer to the homage of the spectator, while the form of the PADRE ETERNO, and the Holy Spirit, with attendant angels, are floating above, we have a devotional group, a "_Sacra Conversazione_:"--it is, in fact a material representation of the Trinity; and the introduction of Joseph into such immediate propinquity with the personages acknowledged as divine is one of the characteristics of the later schools of theological art. It could not possibly have occurred before the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century.