WHO ARE COMMONLY GROUPED TOGETHER IN WORKS OF ART, OR WHO BELONG TO
PARTICULAR COUNTRIES, CITIES, OR LOCALITIES.
While such assemblages of holy persons as are found grouped together
in devotional pictures are to be considered as quite independent
of chronology, we shall find that the selection has been neither
capricious nor arbitrary, and, with a little consideration, we shall
discover the leading idea in the mind of the artist that, at least,
which was intended to be conveyed to the mind of the spectator, and
which was much more intelligible in former times than it is now.
Sometimes we find certain saints placed in companionship, because they
are the joint patrons and protectors of the city or locality for which
the picture was painted. Thus in the Bologna pictures we constantly
find the bishop St. Petronius, St. Eloy, St. Dominick, and the warrior
St. Proculus; while in the Venetian pictures we have perpetual St.
Marks, St. Georges, and St. Catherines.
Or, secondly, they are connected by kindred powers and attributes. Thus
we find St. Sebastian, the patron against pestilence, in company with
St. Roch, who ministered to the sick of the plague. Thus St. Catherine
and St. Jerome, the two patrons of school theology, are often found in
companionship. Where St. Catherine and St. Barbara are found together,
the first figures as patroness of the ecclesiastical, and the second of
the military, power—or they represent respectively the contemplative
and the active life.
Or, thirdly, they are combined in the fancy by some inevitable
association; as St. Augustine and St. Stephen are often in the same
picture, because St. Augustine dedicated some of his most eloquent
works to the glory of the martyr.
Or they were friends on earth, for which reason St. Cyprian and St.
Cornelius are placed together.
Or their relics repose in the same spot; whence St. Stephen and St.
Laurence have become almost inseparable. When St. Vincent and St.
Laurence are placed together, (as in a lovely composition of Parmigiana
where they sit reading out of the same book,) it is because of the
similarity of their fate, and that the popular tradition supposed them
to be brothers.
* * * * *
A point of more general importance, and capable of more definite
explanation, is the predominance of certain sacred personages in
particular schools of Art. St. Cosmo and St. Damian, for instance,
are perpetually recurring in the Florentine pictures as the patron
saints of the Medici family. In the Lombard pictures St. Ambrose is
often found without his compeers—not as doctor of the Church, but as
bishop of Milan. In the Siena pictures, we may look for the nun St.
Catherine of Siena, and St. Ansano, the apostle of the Sienese, holding
his banner and palm. And in the Augustine chapels and churches, St.
Augustine figures, not as doctor of the Church, but as patriarch of the
Order.
A bishop-martyr, holding his palm, and not otherwise designated either
by name or attribute, would be—in one if Perugino’s pictures, St.
Ercolano or St. Costanzo; in a Florentine picture, St. Donato or St.
Romulo; if the picture were painted in the March of Ancona, it would
probably be St. Apollinaris of Ravenna; at Naples it would be St.
Januarius; at Paris, or in a picture painted for a French church, of
which there are many in Italy, it would be St. Denis; and in German
prints, St. Boniface or St. Lambert. I need not further multiply
examples.
If the locality from which the picture came will sometimes determine
the names of the personages, so the personages represented will often
explain the purpose and intended situation of the picture. There is
in Lord Ashburton’s gallery a noble group representing together St.
Peter, St. Leonard, St. Martha, and Mary Magdalene. Such a combination
points it out at once as intended for a charitable institution, and, on
enquiry, we find that it was painted for the chapel of a brotherhood
associated to redeem prisoners, to ransom slaves, to work for the
poor, and to convert the sinner to repentance. Many such interesting
and instructive analogies will be pointed out in the course of the
following pages, and the observer of works of Art will discover others
for himself.
I add here, in alphabetical order, those countries and localities of
which the patron saints are distinguished in works of Art.[6]
ANCONA: St. Cyriacus, _Bishop_; and his mother Anna, _Martyr_.
AREZZO: St. Donato, _Bishop_.
ASTI, NOVARA, and all through the cities of PIEDMONT and the north
of Italy, we find the _Warrior_, St. Maurice, and his companions St.
Secundus, St. Alexander, and the other Martyrs of the Theban Legion.
AUGSBURG: St. Ulrich, _Bishop_; St. Afra, _Martyr_.
AUSTRIA: St. Leopold, St. Stephen, St. Maximilian, St. Coloman.
BAMBERG: St. Henry and St. Cunegunda, _Emperor_ and _Empress_.