awakened the enthusiasm of the neighbouring states, and it is from this time that we find Justina represented in the pictures of the Paduan and Venetian schools, and most frequently in the pictures of Paul Veronese. In the single figures she is richly dressed, wearing the crown and bearing her palin, as princess and as martyr, and in general with the sword transfixing her bosom, which is her proper attribute. She is thus represented in a beautiful figure by Vittore Carpaccio1; and in the fresco by Luini in San Maurizio, at Milan, where she is called by some mistake St. Ursula. In the Venetian altar-pieces St. Justina is often placed on one side of the Madonna, accompanied either by St. Mark or St. Catherine. As patroness of Venice, we find her interceding in heaven for the Venetians, as in a picture in the Arsenal at Venice in another, we have St. Justina and St. Mark presenting Venice (under the form of a beautiful woman, crowned and sumptuously attired) to the Virgin; the naval battle of Carolari is seen below: a grand, scenic, votive picture, painted for the State by Paul Veronese.2

In the magnificent church of Santa Giustina at Padua, the altarpiece by Paul Veronese represents the scene of her martyrdom: amid a crowd of people, the executioner plunges a sword into her bosom; Christ, with the Virgin, St. John, and a numerous company of saints and angels, receives her into glory above. This, to my taste, is a heavy, crowded picture; the fine envraving by Agostino Caracci has given it more celebrity than it deserves. In the same church, in the centre of the choir, stands a chest or shrine, on which is sculptured the history of the life of Santa Giustina in five compartments. 1. She is baptized by St. Prodocimo. 2. The baptism of her parents. 3. She is scized by the emissaries of Maximian, and dragged out of her chario 4. She is martyred by the sword. 5. She is borne to the grave by St. Prodocimo and others.

In some Venetian pictures the attribute of the unicorn, which belongs properly to St. Justina of Antioch, has been given to St. Justina of Padua; and when this is this case it is not easy to

determine whether the mistake arose from ignorance or design. In Domenichino's picture of St. Justina caressing a unicorn in a forest, it is, I imagine, St. Justina of Antioch who is represented.' In Moretto's splendid picture of the Duke Alfonso I. at the feet of St. Justina 2, I should suppose that the artist had the patroness of Padua and Venice, and not the martyr of Antioch in his mind; - or perhaps confounded the two. Neither must it be forgotten that a beautiful female attended by a unicorn is sometimes merely allegorical, representing Chastity; but when the palm and sword are added, it is undoubtedly a St. Justina; and if the picture be by a Venetian artist; if the figures be in the Venetian costume; if Venice be seen in the distance; or St. Mark introduced, then it is probably St. Justina of Padua; otherwise, when a female saint appears alone, or in a company of martyrs, attended by a unicorn, it is St. Justina of Antioch.

St. Justina figures on the Venetian coins struck by the Doges Leonardo Donato and Pasquale Cicogna.

The last of these Italian martyrs who appears worthy of record, as a subject of painting, is one of very recent celebrity, and, perhaps, the most apocryphal saint in the whole calendar, which is saying much.

ST. FILOMENA.

Lat. Sancta Philumena. Fr. Sainte Philomène. Aug. 10. 303.

IN the year 1802, while some excavations were going forward in the catacomb of Priscilla at Rome, a sepulchre was discovered containing the skeleton of a young female; on the exterior were rudely painted some of the symbols constantly recurring in these chambers of the dead: an anchor, an olive branch (emblems of Hope and Peace), a

Or the allegory of Chastity.

2 Vienna Gal. v. p. 577.

scourge, two arrows, and a javelin: above them the following inscription, of which the beginning and end were destroyed:

LUMENA PAX TE CUM FI

The remains, reasonably supposed to be those of one of the early martyrs for the faith, were sealed up and deposited in the treasury of relics in the Lateran; here they remained for some years unthought of. On the return of Pius VII. from France, a Neapolitan prelate was sent to congratulate him. One of the priests in his train, who wished to create a sensation in his district, where the long residence of the French had probably caused some decay of piety, begged for a few relics to carry home, and these recently discovered remains were bestowed on him; the inscription was translated somewhat freely, to signfy Santa Philumena, rest in peace. Amen. Another priest, whose name is suppressed because of his great humility, was favoured by a vision in the broad noon-day, in which he beheld the glorious virgin Filomena, who was pleased to reveal to him that she had suffered death for preferring the Christian faith and her vow of chastity to the addresses of the emperor, who wished to make her his wife. This vision leaving much of her history obscure, a certain young artist, whose name is also suppressed, perhaps because of his great humility, was informed in a vision that the emperor alluded to was Diocletian, and at the same time the torments and persecutions suffered by the Christian virgin Filomena, as well as her wonderful constancy, were also revealed to him. There were some difficulties in the way of the Emperor Diocletian, which incline the writer of the historical account to incline to the opinion. that the young artist in his vision may have made a mistake, and that the emperor may have been not Diocletian but Maximian. The facts, however, now admitted of no doubt: the relics were carried by the priest Francesco da Lucia to Naples; they were enclosed in a case of wood resembling in form the human body; this figure was habited in a petticoat of white satin, and over it a crimson tunic after the Greek fashion; the face was painted to represent nature, a garland of flowers was placed on the head, and in the hands a lily and a javelin with the point reversed to express her purity and her martyrdom; then she was laid in a half-sitting posture in a sarcophagus, of which the sides were glass;

and, after lying for some time in state in the chapel of the Torres family in the church of Sant' Angiolo, she was carried in grand procession to Mugnano, a little town about twenty miles from Naples, amid the acclamations of the people, working many and surprising miracles by

the way.

Such is the legend of St. Filomena, and such the authority on which she has become within the last twenty years one of the most popular saints in Italy. Jewels to the value of many thousand crowns have been offered at her shrine, and solemnly placed round the neck of her image or suspended to her girdle. I found her effigy in the Venetian churches, and in those of Bologna and Lombardy. Her worship has extended to enlightened Tuscany. At Pisa the church of San Francesco contains a chapel dedicated lately to Santa Filomena; over the altar is a picture by Sabatelli representing the saint as a beautiful nymph-like figure floating down from heaven, attended by two angels bearing the lily, palm, and javelin, and beneath in the foreground the sick and maimed who are healed by her intercession; round the chapel are suspended hundreds of votive offerings, displaying the power and the popularity of the saint. There is also a graceful German print after Führich, representing her in the same attitude in which the image lies in the shrine. I did not expect to encounter St. Filomena at Paris; but, to my surprise, I found a chapel dedicated to her in the church of St. Gervais; a statue of her with the flowers, the dart, the scourge, and the anchor under her feet; and two pictures, one surrounded, after the antique fashion, with scenes from her life. In the church of SaintMerry, at Paris, there is a chapel recently dedicated to "Ste Philomène;" the walls covered with a series of frescoes from her legend, painted by Amaury Duval; -a very fair imitation of the old Italian style.

I have heard that St. Filomena is patronised by the Jesuits; even so, it is difficult to account for the extension and popularity of her story in this nineteenth century.

ST. OMOBUONO, the protector of Cremona, and patron saint of tailors, was neither a martyr, nor a monk, nor even a hermit; but as effigies of him are confined entirely to pictures of the Cremonese and Venetian schools, I shall place him here to make my chapter of these local Italian saints complete. He is regarded all over the north of Italy as the patron and example of good citizens, and is the subject of some beautiful pictures.

According to the legend, Omobuono was a merchant of Cremona, who had received from his father but little school learning, yet, from the moment he entered on the management of his own affairs, a wisdom more than human seemed to inspire every action of his life; diligent and thrifty, his stores increased daily, and, with his possessions, his almost boundless charity; nor did his charity consist merely in giving his money in alms, nor in founding hospitals, but in the devotion of his whole heart towards relieving the sorrows as well as the necessities of the poor, and in exhorting and converting to repentance those who had been led into evil courses: neither did this good saint think it necessary to lead a life of celibacy; he was married to a prudent and virtuous wife, who was sometimes uneasy lest her husband's excessive bounty to the poor should bring her children to beggary; but it was far otherwise: Omobuono increased daily in riches and prosperity, so that the people of the city believed that his stores were miraculously multiplied. It is related of him, that being on a journey with his family, and meeting some poor pilgrims who were ready to faint by the wayside with hunger and thirst, he gave them freely all the bread and wine he had provided for his own necessities, and going afterwards to fill his empty wineflasks from a running stream, the water when poured out proved to be most excellent wine, and his wallet was found full of wheaten bread, supplied by the angels in lieu of that which he had given away.

As the life of Omobuono had been in all respects most blessed, so was his death; for one morning, being at his early devotions in the church of St. Egidio, and kneeling before a crucifix, just as the choir were singing the "Gloria in excelsis,” he stretched out his arms in the form of a cross, and in this attitude expired. He was canonised by Pope Innocent III. on the earnest petition of his fellow citizens.

Figures of this amiable citizen-saint occur in the pictures of Giulio