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The Christmas Story in
A Glorious and beautiful story, touching the hearts of men throughout the ages and
inspiring the greatest works of art the by RALEIGH WILLIAMS
world has ever known.
ANOTHER Christmas nears and a world again at peace looks back through the centuries to that night in Bethlehem long, long ago when Mary first pressed the Clirist Child to her breast.
It is an old story, that .of Joseph and Mary, who came up from Galilee to the city of David to be taxed. And there, in the grotto stables where they were forced to stay because the inn was filled, the Christ was born. And in the nearby fields a great light shown upon the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks and the voice of an angel spoke to them to fear not because he brought good tidings: that in the city of David a Savior had been born, Christ the Lord, whom they would find wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
It is a simple story, simply told in the second chapter of St. Luke. Yet it is a glorious and beautiful story, one that has reached down to touch the hearts of men throughout the ages and inspired the greatest works of art the world has ever known. From it have sprung masterpieces by the greatest composers of music, poetry and prose; from it sculptors have been inspired to
genius. But of all the arts which have sought to express the soulstirring Christmas drama none has been employed more successfully than the palette. Many of the great masters of the brush have employed the story of the Nativity for some of their greatest works; many have depicted the scene time and time again.
The "Madonna and Child" was perhaps the most popular of all subjects with the Renaissance masters. Sometimes they were painted by themselves, sometimes with the little cousin Saint John, or with the grandmother Saint Anne, or Saint Joseph, husband of Mary; sometimes with an entire group of saints.
One Siennese painter, Duccio, about the turn of the fourteenth century, surrounded his "Madonna and Child" with twenty angels, six , saints and four of his best Siennese j patrons. The Dutch and Flemish ar li tists employed something of the same "1 idea, when commissioned to paint a \ family with its patron saint, by mak-l ing a huge representation of the saint I with tiny figures of the family . grouped about it.
The Madonnas of Raphael are, of