For the same church of the Misericordia, Giovanni Bentivoglio’s son, Archdeacon of Bologna and papal protonotary, ordered the “Nativity,” now removed to the Gallery,[7] where most of Francia’s masterpieces are collected. In this picture the “Nativity” is treated not as an historical event but as a Christian mystery, that is to say, the Virgin and attendant saints are represented in the act of adoring the new-born child, and celebrating his advent on earth. This class of composition, always a favourite with religious painters, and much used both by Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi, was especially adapted to Francia’s genius. He never possessed the faculty of describing a scene in a vivid and dramatic manner, or of rendering in quick succession all the varied emotions of the human breast, but no one has excelled him in these groups of rapt saints, without a thought beyond the object of their silent adoration. And so we find him constantly moulding his subjects into this form. The Annunciation, Pietà, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin by turns took this shape in his hands. He conceived “these supreme events as mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation to which the great souls of all periods became as it were contemporaries.” [_George Eliot._] In this instance Francia has introduced several portraits among the worshippers. His masterly profile of Bartolommeo felicini in the first Misericordia altar-piece had already proved his skill as a portrait painter, and he now represented Antonio Galeazzo Bentivoglio, who had lately returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in the mantle of a knight of the Red Cross kneeling under a ruined arch to adore the infant Christ. The youthful shepherd who stands opposite, wearing a laurel wreath on his flowing locks, is a portrait of Francia’s intimate friend, the poet jeweller, Girolamo di Casio, on whom the laurel crown was bestowed by Clement VIII. This accomplished man had the greatest admiration for Francia, whose epitaph he lived to compose, and whom he addressed during his lifetime in a sonnet beginning:— “Felice Italia che in se chiude, Si sublime ingegno e si bella effigie Che fanno al cielo e a natura guerra.” “Happy Italy, which contains a genius so lofty and forms so fair that they challenge heaven and nature.”