A WONDERFUL PICTURE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 249, 8 February 1878, Page 5

A WONDERFUL PICTURE.

We (Cathohc Jtemew) have very seldom seen anything from the pen of one of the editors of the New York Observer concerning the Catholic Church, which was not written in doubly-distilled venom The following observations attributed to one of them, Dr." Irenaeus Prime in reference to the Sistine Madonna, are therefore not more beautiful than they are surprising. "It would be hard to exaggerate the indescnbable beauty and glory of this picture. The infant has a head a face that fairly represents a divine child, before whom at this moment all his life and death are present. For then, while a fair-haired boy in his mother s arms, the future was ail before him : the shame the sorrow, the agony : the scourge, the thorns, the cross ; the desert' the garden and Calvary : all, all were on his heart— when he hung on his mother s neck, or lisped his morning prayer at her knees. And beyond all other pictures of the Child Jesus, this one presents him as an infant with years in his soul. . . . The face of the mother is full of tenderness, serenity, meekness and love. The sweetness of expression, if sweetness is capable of being expressed, has been as fully developed m this face as m any that was ever put upon canvas. But it is not in the face of the mother that the wonderful power of this work appears. Her figure, buoyed by its owu lightness and floating firmly m the air ; the adoring old man (St. Sixtus) on his knees, and the bewitching, smiling (St.) Barbara on the other side, contrasted with the aged saint : the whole of the great picture in its parts is so united as to produce the emotions of sacred pleasure in the beholder. It is like eloquence stirring to its deepest depths the soul of the hearer. This addresses the heart through the eye. It speaks as clearly and as effectually as though it were put into words and they fell upon the ear," , J