In the Cathedral at Worms, over the altar, is a very old painting, in
which the Virgin is represented throwing the infant Jesus into the
hopper of a mill; while from the other side he issues, changed into
wafers or little morsels of bread, which the priests are administering
to the people.
Mathison, in his letters, thus describes a picture in a church at
Constance, called the Conception of the Holy Virgin. "An old man lies on
a cloud, whence he darts a vast beam, which passes through a dove
hovering just below; at the end of the beam appears a large transparent
egg, in which egg is seen a child in swaddling clothes, with a glory
round it; Mary sits leaning in an arm-chair and opens her mouth to
receive the egg!" Which are the most profane--these pictures, or the
Venus Anadyomene of Apelles, the Venus of Titian, and the Leda of
Correggio?