The masterpiece of Filippino Lippi is the Vision of Saint Bernard, in the Badia at Florence, and here again angel-youths are introduced with charming effect. Two are in the rear, with hands clasped in adoration; two are beside the Virgin, bearing the weight of her mantle, and raising their earnest young faces with sweet reverence. One of these faces is presented in profile, and has a delicately cut, pure outline, of rare gentleness and beauty.
The artist's ideal is wonderfully helpful to the imagination, and the thought is full of comfort, that it is loving and tender presences like these which are "in charge over us, to keep us in all our ways."
And the Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
Among the innumerable pictures in which the world's great religious painters have represented the scenes of the earthly life of our Lord, it is amazing to note the large proportion of subjects relating to his infancy and childhood. What else can this mean than that the hearts of worshippers ever yearn towards that which they can understand and love, and that thus, of all the varied aspects of Christ's character, it appeals to us most forcibly that He was once a babe in the Bethlehem manger.
To find the earliest delineations of the Christ-child we must go to the Catacombs of Rome, and on the walls of their strange subterranean chapels retrace the fading features of the Divine Babe as painted there centuries ago to cheer the hearts of Christians. Two of these primitive frescos are in the Greek chapel of the Catacomb of S. Praxedes,[19] where they are a constant object of interest to the art pilgrim. Considered æsthetically, they have of course no intrinsic beauty; but to the thoughtful mind they stand for the beginnings of a great art movement which culminated in the canvases of Raphael and Titian.
From the frescos of the Catacombs the next step in the progress of Christian art was to the mosaics ornamenting the basilicas; and here the Christ-child again appears as a conspicuous figure. Some of the most interesting of these mosaics[20] represent the Babe receiving the gifts of the Magi,--as at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and at Saint Apollinare in Ravenna. In others, as at Capua, the Child shares with the enthroned Virgin the adoration of a surrounding group of saints. Still another of peculiar interest is at Santa Maria in Trastevere (Rome), where the Infant is suckled at his mother's breast.