disappointed suitors, is on the left.  The priest joins their hands, or Joseph is in the act of placing the ring on the finger of the bride.  This is the traditional arrangement from Giotto down to Raphael.  In the series by Giotto, in the Arena at Padua, we have three scenes from the marriage legend. 1.  St. Joseph and the other suitors present their wands to the high-priest. 2.  They kneel before the altar, on which their wands are deposited, waiting for the promised miracle. 3.  The marriage ceremony.  It takes place before an altar, in the interior of the temple.  The Virgin, a most graceful figure, but rather too old, stands attended by her maidens; St. Joseph holds his wand with the flower and the holy Dove resting on it:  one of the disappointed suitors is about to strike him; another breaks his wand against his knee.  Taddeo Gaddi, Angelico, Ghirlandajo, Perugino, all followed this traditional conception of the subject, except that they omit the altar, and place the locality in the open air, or under a portico.  Among the relics venerated in the Cathedral of Perugia, is the nuptial ring of the blessed Virgin; and for the altar of the sacrament there, Perugino painted the appropriate subject of the Marriage of the Virgin.[1] Here the ceremony takes place under the portico of the temple, and Joseph of course puts the ring on her finger.  It is a beautiful composition, which has been imitated more or less by the painters of the Perugino school, and often repeated in the general arrangement.

[Footnote 1:  It was carried off from the church by the French, sold in France, and is now to be seen in the Musee at Caen.]

But in this subject, Raphael, while yet a youth, excelled his master and all who had gone before him.  Every one knows the famous “SPOSALIZIO of the Brera."[1] It was painted by Raphael in his twenty-first year, for the church of S. Francesco, in Citta di Castello; and though he has closely followed the conception of his master, it is modified by that ethereal grace which even then distinguished him.  Here Mary and Joseph stand in front of the temple, the high-priest joins their hands, and Joseph places the ring on the finger of the bride; he is a man of about thirty, and holds his wand, which has blossomed into a lily, but there is no Dove upon it.  Behind Mary is a group of the virgins of the temple; behind Joseph the group of disappointed suitors; one of whom, in the act of breaking his wand against his knee, a singularly graceful figure, seen more in front and richly dressed, is perhaps the despairing youth mentioned in the legend.[2] With something of the formality of the elder schools, the figures are noble and dignified; the countenances of the principal personages have a characteristic refinement and beauty, and a soft, tender, enthusiastic melancholy, which lends a peculiar and appropriate charm to the subject.  In fact, the whole scene is here idealized; It is like a lyric poem, (Kugler’s Handbook, 2d edit.)