Any one of these various types of Madonna may also be modified by the introduction of a =kneeling donor=. Thus, Van Eyck’s glowing picture of the Chancellor Rollin adoring Our Lady is an example of the simple Madonna and Child, enthroned, accompanied by the donor; though in this case, the composition is further slightly enriched by the dainty little floating angel in the background, who places an exquisitely jewelled crown of the finest Flemish workmanship on the head of the Virgin. The Madonna della Vittoria, again, which we have so fully considered, is essentially a Madonna and Saints, with the kneeling donor. In very early pictures, you will observe that the donors are often painted grotesquely small, while Our Lady and the Saints are of relatively superhuman stature, to mark their superiority as heavenly personages. In later works, this absurdity dies out, and the figure and face of the donor become one of the recognised excuses for early portrait painting. Indeed, portraiture took its rise for the modern world from such kneeling figures. Another point of view from which it is interesting to compare these various Madonnas is that of the =Nationality= or =School of Art= to which they belong. The =early Italian= representations of Our Lady are usually more or less girlish in appearance, refined in features, and comparatively simple in dress and decoration. The Flemish type is peculiarly insipid, one might often say, even with great artists, inane and meaningless; in the hands of minor painters, it becomes positively wooden. The face here is long and rather thin; the features peaky. The Madonna of Flemish art, indeed, like the Christ of all art, is a sacred type which is seldom varied. =Early French= Madonnas, once more, are regal and ladylike, sometimes even courtly. They wear crowns as queens, and are better observed in the Louvre in sculpture than in painting. This Gallery hardly suffices to note in full the peculiarities of the =sub-types= in various =Italian schools=; but they may still be recognised. Of these, the =Florentine= are spiritual, delicate, and strongly ideal; the =Lombard=, intellectual, like well-read ladies; the =Venetian=, stately and matronly oligarchical mothers, degenerating later into the mere aristocratic nobility, soulless and materialised, of Titian and his followers. The =Umbrians= and =Sienese= are distinguished for the most part by their pure and saintly air of fervent piety.