Note 10 — Chapter IX · NORTH TIROL—THE INNTHAL. INNSBRUCK (continued).

Leopold benefited and adorned the town by the enclosure and planting of the Hofgarten, and the bronze equestrian statue of himself, still one of its chief ornaments; but his memory has been more deeply endeared to the people by the present of Kranach’s Madonna, which they have copied in almost every church, household, and highway of the country. It is a little picture on panel, very like many of its date, in which the tenderness of devotion beams through and redeems all the stiffness of mannerism; but which we are apt to pass, I had almost said by the dozen, in the various galleries of Europe, with no more than a casual glance. With the Tirolese it was otherwise. Their faith-inspired eyes saw in it a whole revelation of Divine mercy and love; they gazed on the outpouring of maternal fondness and filial confidence in the unutterable communion of the Mother and the Son there portrayed; and deeming that where so much love reigned no petition could be rejected, they believed that answers to the frequent prayers of faith sent up before it were reaped an hundredfold,10 and the fame of the benefits so derived was symbolized in the title universally given to the picture, of Mariähülfsbild.11 Leopold being in the early part of his reign on a visit to the Elector of Saxony, on occasion of one of his journeys between Tirol and the Low Countries, and being lost in admiration of his collection of pictures at Dresden, received from him the offer of any painting he liked to select. There were many choice specimens, but the devotional conception of this picture carried him away from all the rest, and it became the object of his selection. He never parted from it afterwards, and it accompanied him in all his journeyings. When in Innsbruck, it formed the altar-piece of the Hofkapelle, whither the people crowded to kindle their devotion at its focus. After the withdrawal of the allied French, Swedish, and Hessian troops in 1647, the Innsbruckers, in thanksgiving for the success of their prayers before it, built the elegant little circular temple12 on the left bank of the Inn, still called the Mariähülfskirche, thinking to enshrine it there; but Ferdinand Karl, who had then succeeded to his father Leopold, could not bear to part with it, and gave them a copy instead, by Paul Schor, inserted in a larger picture representing it borne by angels, and the notabilities of Innsbruck kneeling beneath it, the Mariähülfskirche being introduced into the background landscape. However, the number of people who pressed to approach it was so great that he was in a manner constrained to bestow it on the Pfarrkirche only two or three years later, where it now remains; it was translated thither during Queen Christina’s visit, as I have mentioned above. It was borne on a car by six white horses, the crowded streets being strewn with flowers. It is a small picture, and has been let into a large canvas painted in Schöpf’s best manner, with angels which appear to support it, and beneath St. James, patron of the church, and St. Alexius. A centenary festival was observed in memory of the translation by Maria Theresa in 1750, when all the precious ex votos, the thank-offerings for many granted prayers, were exposed to view under the light streaming from a hundred silver candelabra, the air around being perfumed by the flowers of a hundred silver vases. The procession was a splendid pageant, in which no expense seems to have been spared, the great Empress herself, accompanied by her son, afterwards Joseph II., heading it. This was repeated—in a manner corresponding with the diminished magnificence of the age—in 1850, the Emperor Ferdinand I., the Empress Anna, and other members of the Imperial family, taking their part in it.13