III.—HISTORICAL AND DEVOTIONAL SUBJECTS

The sacred subjects as represented in art become historical when they record any event or story of the Bible, or express the actions, miracles, or martyrdoms of saints. Yet a story may become a symbol—thus the Last Supper may be treated as an event, or it may express the symbol of our redemption.

Devotional pictures are those in which no action or event takes place, and where the sainted personages are represented solely in their sacred character, whether standing singly or grouped with others. Such a group is called in Italian a sacra conversazione—meaning a society in which there is communion. The most important of these devotional subjects are those in which the whole celestial hierarchy are represented, such as the Paradiso so often met with in ecclesiastical decoration, where Christ sits enthroned in glory; the Coronation of the Virgin, the old and accepted symbol of the triumph of the Church; the Last Judgment, from the Apocalypse, and the Adoration of the Lamb. The order of arrangement in these pictures was fixed and absolute, having been early decided by the Church authorities. The Virgin Mary and John the Baptist come first after the Trinity; then in their order the evangelists, patriarchs, prophets, the apostles, the fathers, the bishops, martyrs, monks, and nuns.

This order might sometimes be varied in order to exalt a favourite saint, as when sometimes St. Augustine is enthroned, with St. Peter and St. Paul on each side; or St. Barbara is represented enthroned, attended by Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine. Frequently the patron saint of the votary or the locality is represented enthroned, and other saints (of a superior rank under other circumstances) are here placed on each side or lower down in the picture, and become accessories. In these pictures the donor is frequently introduced kneeling before his patron saint, sometimes accompanied by his wife and family. And to show his lowliness and self-abasement, he is often so small as to be out of all proportion with the other figures in the picture.

A bishop kneeling among a group of saints is usually the donor of the picture. When he stands with other saints, he is one of the bishop-martyrs or patrons. There are some hundreds of these, and they are the most difficult to distinguish of all the pictured saints.

The anachronisms found in many of the devotional pictures where those saints and sacred personages who lived at widely different times are found grouped together, is explained by the spiritual conception that there is no such thing as time in heaven. So that that which at first seems so incongruous, as to excite derision and pity for the mistakes and ignorances of an earlier age, was instead in the highest degree significant of the immortal life and eternal youth of those blessed ones, who “belong no more to our earth, but to heaven and eternity.”

In the sacred subjects that come under the head of historical, some are scriptural, portraying scenes from the Old or New Testament, while others are purely legendary in character.

The historical subjects from the lives of the saints represent usually some miracle they have performed or some scene from their martyrdom.

The martyrdoms found everywhere in all countries are those of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Stephen Protomartyr, St. Laurence, St. Catherine, and St. Sebastian.