Mrs. Jameson was a prolific writer, but those of her works on which her fame chiefly rests are the ones which are classed under the general title, _Sacred and Legendary Art_. They treat of God the Father and Son, of the Madonna and the Saints, as illustrated in art from the earliest ages to modern times. So masterly and exhaustive was her treatment of the difficult subjects discussed in this _chef d'oeuvre_ of hers that no less an authority than the eminent German archaeologist, F. X. Kraus, writes of this elaborate production as follows: "Neither before nor since has the subject matter of this work been handled with such skill and thoroughness. The older iconographic works were mere dilettanteism. For the first time since classical archaeology had applied the principles of modern criticism to Greek and Roman iconography, and had presented an example of scientific treatment free from such reproach, was a serious iconography of our early Christian monuments possible. Mrs. Jameson was the first to attempt this on a large scale. It was clear to her--and here lay the advance which her work reveals--that in order to accomplish her colossal task two things must be realized. She must not build on a foundation of material that is imperfect or brought together in a haphazard way. She must not only see and test everything available in the way of monuments, but she must likewise place the productions of literature and poetry beside those of the plastic arts. It was clear to her, also, that, in this case, one would throw light on the other, and that the investigator who would lay claim to the name of archaeologist must, moreover, study the spirit of a people in all its monumental and literary manifestations. "Mrs. Jameson strove to learn the mind and the mode of early Christian times from the works of the Fathers. She saw in the hymns of the Middle Ages and in the writings of the mystics the sources of the art ideas which disclose themselves in the wall and glass paintings of our cathedrals and in the entrancing creation of a Fiesole. She had also the special advantage of being thoroughly imbued with Dante's ideas of the plastic arts of the Middle Ages. "And all this is evidenced in a form which exhibits neither dry dissertation nor wearisome nomenclature. Each of her articles is a little essay. It teaches us what place the Madonna, or St. Catherine, or some other saint has held in the memory and in the imagination of past centuries. We behold the sainted forms flitting before our eyes in all the charm of poetic perfection which was given them by the childlike phantasy of the Middle Ages, and in all the power which they exercised over men's minds, and which, however we may view the religious side of the question, certainly had the effect of creating forms of infinite beauty and pictures of unspeakable reality."[218]