We may here remark, in passing, the nearly coeval introduction of a class of themes which, though innovating upon the purity of Catholic faith, were admirably adapted to develop the mystic tendencies of devotional painting. It was about the thirteenth century that the Madonna acquired the unfortunately paramount place in the Romish worship she has since been permitted to hold. Her history became a favourite topic of Franciscan and other popular preachers, at once facile and fascinating. Not content with describing the scriptural events of her life, they adopted traditions regarding her birth, marriage, and death; or the more abstruse and questionable legends of her miraculous conception, her assumption, exaltation, and her coronation as queen of heaven, and the _cintola_ or girdle by which she drew up souls from limbo. It would be quite foreign to the matter in hand were we to examine the orthodoxy of these devotional novelties, or their influence upon the social estimate of the female character. Enough to observe that they speedily enriched Christian art in all its branches, but chiefly in Umbria, where, in accordance with the prevailing popular taste, such of them as partook of dogmatic mystery gained a preference over more real or scenic incidents. The early Giottists were wont to close their dramatic delineations of her earthly history with a peaceful death, its only artistic licence being the transit of her soul in the shape of a swaddled babe. But the Madonna-worship of this more spiritual school was satisfied with nothing short of her translation in the body, direct to realms of bliss from amid a concourse of adoring disciples. In like manner, the old Byzantine painters inscribed over her image one uniform epigraph, "the Mother of God"; whilst the devotional masters delighted to seat her beyond the skies, where her blessed Son placed a diadem upon her brows as the queen of heaven. It hence became an established practice of the latter to depict her charms, not after the mould in which nature cast fair but frail humanity, but to clothe them in abstract and purer beauty appropriate to one whom, though incarnate, they were taught to regard as divine. CHAPTER XXVII The Umbrian school of painting, its scholars and influence--Fra Angelico da Fiesole--Gentile da Fabriano--Pietro Perugino--Artists at Urbino--Piero della Francesca--Fra Carnevale--Francesco di Giorgio.