“Created beings all in lowliness
  Surpassing, as in height above them all.”

It is time to change the scene,—­to contemplate the Virgin, as she has been exhibited to us in the relations of earthly life, as the mere woman, acting and suffering, loving, living, dying, fulfilling the highest destinies in the humblest state, in the meekest spirit.  So we begin her history as the ancient artists have placed it before us, with that mingled naivete and reverence, that vivid dramatic power, which only faith, and love, and genius united, could impart.

HISTORICAL SUBJECTS

PART I.

THE LIFE OF THE VIRGIN MARY FROM HER BIRTH TO HER MARRIAGE WITH JOSEPH.

1.  THE LEGEND OF JOACHIM AND ANNA. 2.  THE NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 3.  THE DEDICATION IN THE TEMPLE. 4.  THE MARRIAGE WITH JOSEPH.

THE LEGEND OF JOACHIM AND ANNA.

Ital. La Leggenda di Sant’ Anna Madre della Gloriosa Vergine Maria, e di San Gioacchino.

Of the sources whence are derived the popular legends of the life of the Virgin Mary, which, mixed up with the few notices in Scripture, formed one continuous narrative, authorized by the priesthood, and accepted and believed in by the people, I have spoken at length in the Introduction.  We have now to consider more particularly the scenes and characters associated with her history; to show how the artists of the Middle Ages, under the guidance and by the authority of the Church, treated in detail these favourite themes in ecclesiastical decoration.

In early art, that is, up to the end of the fifteenth century, Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin, never appear except in the series of subjects from her life.  In the devotional groups and altar-pieces, they are omitted.  St. Bernard, the great theological authority of those times, objects to the invocation of any saints who had lived before the birth of Christ, consequently to their introduction into ecclesiastical edifices in any other light than as historical personages.  Hence, perhaps, there were scruples relative to the representations of St. Anna, which, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, placed the artists under certain restrictions.

Under the name of Anna, the Church has honoured, from remote times, the memory of the mother of the Virgin.  The Hebrew name, signifying Grace, or the Gracious, and all the traditions concerning her, came to us from the East, where she was so early venerated as a saint, that a church was dedicated to her by the Emperor Justinian, in 550.  Several other churches were subsequently dedicated to her in Constantinople during the sixth and seventh centuries, and her remains are said to have been deposited there in 710.  In the West, she first became known in the reign of