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statues of St. Magnus; sometimes with the stag bearing the crucifix, which among the antique symbols either expressed piety or religious aspiration in a general sense, or the conversion of some reckless lover of the chase, who, like the Wild Huntsman of the German ballad, had pursued his sport in defiance of the sacred ordinances and the claims of humanity. In this latter sense it was anciently applied, till, realized in the fancy of the people, the instructive allegory became an actual miracle or a wondrous legend; as in this story of St. Hubert, and that of St. Eustace, who is often confounded with him.

According to his own desire, St. Hubert was buried first in the church of St. Peter at Liége. Thirteen years after his death his body was disinterred in presence of Carloman, king of the Franks, and found entire; even the episcopal robes in which he had been interred were without spot or stain; and his tomb became famous for the miracles and cures performed there. About a century after his death, at the request of the Benedictine monks of Ardennes, his body was removed from Liége and deposited in their abbey church, and St. Hubert became thenceforth St. Hubert of Ardennes. The emperor, Louis le Débonnaire, then at Aix-la-Chapelle, assisted at the translation of the relics, and the day was long kept as a festival throughout this part of Flanders.

I believe this translation of the body of St. Hubert from Liége to Ardennes, and his reinterment in the abbey church, to be the subject of an old Flemish picture now in the possession of Sir Charles Eastlake. It was formerly styled the burial of St. Thomas à Becket, -I know not on what grounds, for here we find none of the attributes of a martyr, nor any of the miraculous picturesque circumstances attending the burial of St. Thomas à Becket. On the altar, behind the principal group, stands a shrine, on which is a little figure of St. Hubert with his hunting-horn, just as I have seen him represented in the old French and Flemish carvings.

The royal personage assisting is probably intended for Louis le Débonnaire. This picture, which is of wonderful beauty, finished in every part, and the heads like miniature portraits in character and delicacy of execution, is attributed to Justus of Ghent (a scholar of Hubert van Eyck), and was probably painted about 1474.

To St. Hubert, as patron saint of the chase, chapels were often erected within the precincts of the forest, where the huntsman might pay his devotions to his favorite saint before he began his favorite sport. As he was also the patron saint of dogs, we often find them introduced into pictures of him: bread blessed at his shrine was considered as a holy charm against the hydrophobia.

In the devotional figures so frequent in the old French and Flemish churches, St. Hubert is represented in his episcopal habit, with a book in one hand and a hunting-horn in the other; or the stag, with the crucifix between its horns, stands at his side; or, more rarely, he holds the breviary horizontally in his hands, and on it stands the miraculous stag. Where St. Hubert as bishop bears the hunting-horn, I believe he must be considered as the patron saint of the military order of St. Hubert, instituted in 1444 by Gerard, duke of Guelders; the knights bear as their insignia a golden cor-de-chasse. It is necessary to distinguish carefully between the hunting-horn and the drinking-horn: a bishop with a drinking-horn in his hand represents St. Cornelius, and the attribute of the horn is merely in allusion to his name; he was bishop of Rome in the third century.*

The vision of the miraculous stag is styled "The Conversion of St. Hubert": and here it becomes necessary, but sometimes difficult, to distinguish him from St. Eustace. We must bear in mind that St. Hubert

*The horn was used in ancient times to hold the consecrated oil it was then called the Horn of Sacrament, and in the pictures of St. Cornelius may have a religious significance.

seldom (as far as I know, never) appears in Italian Art, while St. Eustace seldom appears in Northern Europe; St. Hubert wears the dress of a hunter, St. Eustace that of a Roman soldier. He will be found among the Warrior Saints.

There is a beautiful miniature in the "Heures d'Anne de Bretagne," which will give an idea of the manner in which the conversion of St. Hubert is generally represented. The angel who flies towards him, bearing the stole in his hand, is intended to show that he exchanged the life of a hunter for that of an ecclesiastic. In the French legend it is related that when "Monseigneur Saint Hubert " was consecrated bishop, an angel brought down from heaven the stole with which he was invested.

The most celebrated example, however, is the rare and exquisite print of Albert Dürer, so well known to collectors. St. Hubert is kneeling, in the hunting costume of the fifteenth century, with his horn and couteaude-chasse suspended at his side, and wearing the furred cap and the knightly spurs; his horse is near him, and his panting dogs in the foreground. On a wooded eminence stands the visionary hart, with the crucifix between his horns. This celebrated composition, having no title, has sometimes been styled St. Eustace; but I believe that in the French and German works of Art the subject may be understood to refer to the legend of St. Hubert the Hunter; in Italian pictures it is generally St. Eustatius.*

In our National Gallery are two pictures from the story of St. Hubert. 1. His conversion by the miraculous stag. 2. The angel descending with the stole.f

The life of St. Hubert, in a series of eight bas-reliefs, has been lately executed by Wilhem Geefs, a Belgian sculptor of great reputation, for the shrine in the church of St. Hubert in Ardennes. They are designed with much poetic feeling in the picturesque style of the early Renaissance. There are fine casts in the Crystal Palace (No. 109, French Court); and for a full description see the Handbook to the Modern Sculpture, p. 41.

These are attributed to the Meister von Werden. In another

Among the early Spanish bishops, ST. LEANDER and ST. ISIDORE, two brothers who were successively bishops of Seville, and became the patrons of the city, are found represented in the pictures of the Seville school. Both these saints were chiefly distinguished as the determined opponents of Arianism in Spain. St. Leander is styled the " Apostle of the Goths"; St. Isidore, the " Egregius Doctor of Spain."

In the dissensions between the Catholics and the Arians, Hermengildus, son of King Leovigild, relinquished the Arian faith, and was put to death by his father: he has been regarded as one of the famous martyrs of Spain. The arms of the city of Seville exhibit St. Ferdinand, king of Castile and Leon, on a throne with St. Leandro on one side, and St. Isidore on the other. And, in the pictures of Roelas and Herrera, we often find the princely martyr, St. Hermengildo, attended by the two bishops; or sometimes St. Justa and St. Rufina, St. Leander and St. Isidore, the four patrons of Seville, are in the same picture.

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Among the chefs-d'œuvre of Murillo are counted the San Leandro and the San Isidoro, each enthroned, robed in white, and wearing their mitres, noble and characteristic heads, now in the Cathedral at Seville. The masterpiece of Roelas is the fine picture of the death of S. Isidore (el Transito de San Isidoro), where he is expiring on the steps of the altar, after dividing his substance among the poor: and the masterpiece of Herrera is the apotheosis of St. Hermengild, where, after his martyrdom, the Gothic prince is seen carried into glory, arrayed in a cuirass of blue steel and a red mantle, and holding a cross. St. Isidore stands on the left, St. Leander on the right; and the son of Hermengild, a beautiful, fair-haired boy, is gazing rapturously upwards, as his sainted father mounts to heaven.*

picture by the same old German St. Hubert is attired as bishop, with the stag on his book.

*For a further account of these pictures, see Mr. Stirling's "Annals of the Artists in Spain." He thus describes the death

The other Spanish bishops who are most remarkable as subjects of Art- - for example, St. Ildefonso, St. Thomas of Villanova, &c. - belonged to the regular Monastic Orders.*

of St. Isidore: "Clad in pontifical robes and a dark mantle, the prelate kneels in the foreground expiring in the arms of a group of venerable priests, whose snowy hair and beards are finely relieved by the youthful bloom of two beautiful children of the choir, who kneel beside them; the background is filled up with the far-receding aisle of the church, some altars, and a multitude of sorrowing people. At the top of the picture, in a blaze of light, are seen our Lord and the Virgin enthroned on clouds." He adds: "For majesty of design, depth of feeling, richness of color, and the various beauty of the heads, and for the perfect mastery which the painter has displayed in the use of his materials, this altarpiece (in the church of St. Isidore at Seville) may be ranked amongst the greatest productions of the pencil"; and he compares it with Domenichino's "Communion of St. Jerome" in the Vatican. Juan de las Roelas was one of the earliest and greatest painters of the Spanish school. I cannot but remember that a most admirable and interesting picture by Roelas was sold in the Soult collection for less than one half of the sum which the former (not the present) managers of the National Gallery thought fit to give for a coarse, bedaubed, fifth-rate Titian. For the story of Hermengild, see Gibbon, c. 37.

* See "Legends of the Monastic Orders."

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