HOLY FAMILY. The name given in art to representations of the Virgin and the Infant Saviour and their attendants. Th, such composition is that in the Cata•ondi of Saint Calixtus in Rome, with the Prophet Isaiah. The Virgin is represented sitting on a seat, which soon became a throne, the traditional atl i t title up to the Renaissance. The Byzan tine School, as early as the sixth century. invented the type in which the Child is seated directly in the centre of the Vir gin's lap, and is blessing, both figures gazing straight forward. Some of these early pictures were regarded as painted by Saint Luke and en dowed with miraeulials powers. Such are a num ber in the eliiirches of 1iionte (e.g. at San Sisto, Santa Maria -Nlaggiore, etc.). and Venice (e.g. that of Saint lark, brought from Saint Sophia in 1204). Later, this school added attendant angels, who sometimes, as in the school of Candia, bore the emblems of the Passion, the sight of which affrights the Child. The arrangement in whiell the angels are throne-bearing and Adoring figures, in rhythmic arrangement on either side of an immense throne, was developed very beau tifully by Cimalate and Dueeio in their famous pictures at Florence and Siena. It was quite late in the Middle Ages when other figures were brought into the composition. These were, es pecially, Saint -1nna, the mother of the Virgin (sometimes holding the Virgin in her lap), Saint Joseph. and as playmates to the Infant Christ,
the infant John the Baptist (usually in goat-skin and bearing a cross), or Saint Catharine (with whom Christ is being sometimes mystically married). Even the early legendary history of the infancy of Christ has been drawn upon for such scenes as the Twelve -Apostles playing with the Infant Christ as buys—a seem peculiar to German art. Of all subjects of Christian art that of the Madonna and Child. unknown before the thirteenth century, came into overwhelming prominence, Iwcioning the favorite theme of the Italian painters of the Renaissance. Giovanni Bellini, Perugino, Fi lippo Lippi, T.conardo, Raphael, and Andrea del Santo may he mentioned finiong the many who frequently treated it. One of its variants at that time was the adoring Virgin on her knees before the Infant, (Filippo Lippi). The scene of the Iloly Family must be distinguished from the more elaborate scenes in which the Virgin and Child, similarly portrayed, are accompanied by several large figures, saints and fathers of the Church, which are not mere accessories of the sacred group; this is usually termed a 8aera (or Santa) Coneersazionc, and was a popular scene, especially with the Umbrian, Venetian, and northern schools of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.