Where the usual order is varied, there is generally some reason for it; for instance, in the exaltation of a favourite saint, as we sometimes find St. Dominick and St. Francis by the side of St. Peter and St. Paul: and among the miniatures of that extraordinary MS., the Hortus Deliciarum, now at Strasbourg, painted for a virgin abbess, there is a ‘Paradiso’ in which the painter, either by her command or in compliment to her, has placed the virgins immediately after the angels. * * * * * The representation of the Virgin and Child with saints grouped around them, is a devotional subject familiar to us from its constant recurrence. It also frequently happens that the tutelary saint of the locality, or the patron saint of the votary, is represented as seated on a raised throne in the centre; and other saints, though under every other circumstance taking a superior rank, become here accessories, and are placed on each side or lower down in the picture: for example, where St. Augustine is enthroned, and St. Peter and St. Paul stand on each side, as in a picture by B. Vivarini,[2] or where St. Barbara is enthroned, and Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine stand on each side, as in a picture by Matteo di Siena.[3] In such pictures, the votary or donor is often introduced kneeling at the feet of his patron, either alone or accompanied by his wife and other members of his family: and to express the excess of his humility, he is sometimes so diminutive in proportion to the colossal object of his veneration, as to be almost lost to sight; we have frequent examples of this _naïveté_ of sentiment in the old mosaics and votive altar-pieces; for instance, in a beautiful old fresco at Assisi, where the Magdalene, a majestic figure about six feet high, holds out her hand in benediction to a little Franciscan friar about a foot in height: but it was abandoned as barbarous in the later schools of Art, and the votary, when retained, appears of the natural size; as in the _Madonna del Donatore_ of Raphael[4], where Sigismond Conti is almost the finest and most striking part of that inestimable picture: and in the _Madonna_ of the Meyer family by Holbein.[5] When a bishop is introduced into a group of saints kneeling, while all the others are standing, he may be supposed to be the _Donatore_ or _Divoto_, the person who presents the picture. When he is standing, he is one of the bishop-patrons or bishop-martyrs, of whom there are some hundreds, and who are more difficult to discriminate than any other pictured saints. * * * * *