Arunjuez after Murillo

THe Virgin...stands enthroned on clouds, in loveliness of face and form, chaste and graceful drapery, and transcendent colouring. Atmosphere and infant angels, too, are brightness and beauty; the one, golden hued; the others, lustrous and exultant, making the gazer feel as if he were quaffing gladness, and has flung on him sweetness of peace and purity, as palms, myrtles, lilies, and roses, are waved and tossed abroad by the fluttering throng of innocents. While in recognition of Divine purpose by the heavenward look, in transported sense and soul told alike by a face of yearning submission, and by the folded hands on the breast, there is seen the beautifully tender and gentle; trustful and rapturous, the sublimely spiritual.... There is somethng about it so expressive of seraphic obedience,so much less of earth than heaven in the pure and pious fervour of the face; something so marvellously happy, yet so humbly passive, in the folded hands stilling the glad tumult of the heart; something so exquistely spiritual about this revelation; that one lingers long at the art-shrine; and the longer, the stronger he clings to-blending lines, and tints, and tones which make a thing of truth and beauty. Presented as the Virgin here is, if knowledge of the Passion and its pangs was hers, she looked beyond them at the Glory of God, and the Grace of his Redemption. H. Willis Baxley, M.D.