"Madonna" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Clotel, do not say that"; and covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child. Recovering from his emotion, he found himself alone. The moon looked down upon him mild, but very sorrowfully; as the Madonna seems to gaze upon her worshipping children, bowed down with consciousness of sin. At that moment he would have given worlds to have disengaged himself from Gertrude, but he had gone so far, that blame, disgrace, and duels with angry relatives ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... face towards Robert. The afternoon sun was illumining her countenance. He had seen in Mr. Henchman's bookstall a beautiful picture of a Madonna. Mr. Knox told him it was a steel engraving from a picture painted by the great artist Raphael, and Robert wondered if the countenance was any more lovely than that which looked up to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Petersburg. Among the personal relics seen in the museum is the coat of mail worn by Cortez during his battles from Vera Cruz to the capital, also the silk banner which was borne in all his fights. This small flag bears a remarkably lovely face of the Madonna, which must have been the work of a master hand. The shield of Montezuma is also exhibited, with many arms, jewels, and picture writings, these last relating to historic matters, both Toltec and Aztec. The ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... her own thoughts, not his. "I came to—day because I have made up my mind. I wanted them to confirm me—to say that I was right. If you weren't here, I should go up to them and whisper to them, as I've seen women do to the Madonna abroad. I ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... begins the country of Canada. "Il settimo giorno di detto mese la vigilia della Madonna, dopo udita la messa ci partimmo dall' isola de' nocellari per andar all'insu di detta fiume, e arrivamo a quattordici isole distanti dall' isola de Nocellari intorno setto in otto leghe, e quivi e il principio della provincia, e terra di Canada."—J. Cartier, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... pain seemed unbearable. What the outcome would be God only knew. With a quick movement, as if seeking relief, he rose to his feet and walked to the portrait. Then lifting his hands above his head with the movement of a despairing suppliant before the Madonna he ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... month of August, are so prevalent along the Gulf coast. Clara Sanders sat near a window, bending over a piece of needlework, while, with her hands clasped behind her, Beulah walked up and down the floor. Their countenances contrasted vividly; Clara's sweet, placid face, with drooped eyelids and Madonna-like serenity; the soft, auburn hair curled about her cheeks, and the delicate lips in peaceful rest. And Beulah!—how shall I adequately paint the gloom and restlessness written in her stormy countenance? To tell you that ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... disciples whom he has taught to expect mercy and justice on earth, but forbidden to expect it within the reach of the longest life of any man or race of men. His rebellious followers come at night into the Cathedral where Gabriel is watching, to rob an especially rich Madonna, whom he has taught them to regard as a senseless and wasteful idol, and they will not hear him when he pleads with them against the theft. The inevitable irony of the event is awful, but it is not cruel, rather it is the supreme ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... general contour and the features are well preserved. The face is oval, with a rather higher and fuller forehead than usual; the hair, which was evidently of a rather light brown, being parted in the center, and brought down with a little variation from the strict Madonna fashion. The eyes are large, and blue. The lips rather full. A snood or fillet of blue ribbon confined her luxuriant hair. In form she was rather above the usual height of women, and slender as became her age; though with a perceptible tendency towards greater fullness ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... 'the workman made it, therefore it is not God.' The theory that the idol is only a symbol is not the actual belief of idolaters. It is a product of the study, but the worshipper unites in his thought the irreconcilable beliefs that it was made and is divine. A goldsmith will make and sell a Madonna, and when it is put in the cathedral, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... me of a madonna, my saint-like cousin," said Jennie, placing her bright red cheek against the purely transparent and more ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St. Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never once mentioning in his writings that he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... when the children had seen enough of it, and sketching another in its stead,—faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their furs, and pine trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and then—very reverently—a Madonna and Child. It was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him anything. But it was all lifelike, and kept the whole troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with wide ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... the Madonna," she continued after a pause, "the one I like best is where Mary is sitting, holding in her hands the crown of thorns; everything else had been wrenched from her grasp, but this they had no use for. What a legacy it was! As I look at ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... Canada and old Mexico boast of more. So late as the prosaic year of 1889 the Virgin was seen to descend into the streets of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to save her image on the Catholic church in that place, when it was swept by a deluge in which hundreds of persons perished. It was the wrath of the Madonna that caused just such a flood in New Mexico long years ago. There is in the old Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Santa Fe, a picture that commemorates the appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego, an Indian in Guadalupe, old ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... we had finished our coffee we went for a walk—not the two old ladies, who settled down at once to their embroidery frames; one of them showed me her work—really quite beautiful—a church ornament of some kind, a painted Madonna on a ground of white satin; she was covering the whole ground with heavy gold embroidery, so thick it ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... and every sculptured form was invested with a new and indescribable beauty. Upon the summit of a hill within these gardens, sat a youth and maiden engaged in most earnest conversation. The maiden was exceedingly beautiful, with a face which reminded one of the Madonna of Murillo, so gentle, so tender, and so bewitchingly lovely. The youth sat at her feet upon the green turf, and with his head turned back, gazing upon her, there was disclosed a noble and most handsome countenance. His long hair, black as night, fell from his forehead, and his eyes ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... pretty fellow!' said Rollo, as he turned the next print. It was a contrast to the St. Bartholomew; a Madonna and child, from Fra Bartholomeo, at which they were all content to look silently. Rollo began to talk, then, instead of asking questions, and made himself very interesting. So much he knew of art matters, so many a story and legend he could tell about the masters, and so well he could help the less ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... itself, robber and shepherd propensities, similar to those of its founder, were of advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent the morning riding and shooting in the Campagna—I passed long hours in the various galleries—I gazed at each statue, and lost myself in a reverie before many a fair Madonna or beauteous nymph. I haunted the Vatican, and stood surrounded by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stone deity was possessed by sacred gladness, and the eternal fruition of love. They looked on me with unsympathizing complacency, and often in wild accents I reproached ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... wears her silken tresses arranged on either side of her head, draped like curtains from a central parting, is to be envied if she can do it and yet look young and pretty. She is the Madonna type and seems to possess all the attributes of gentleness, modesty, and meekness, and angelic sweetness that are supposed to characterize the distinctively feminine woman. This is the ideal style of coiffure much bepraised by man, because, according ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... an old mediaeval painting of a Madonna. That Madonna had a stiffness, a deadly pallor, a thinness of face incompatible with strict beauty. But on the thin lips there was a smile for which no word is lovely enough; and in the eyes was a pure and far-seeing look, hardly to be imagined except by one who painted (like Fra Angelico) ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... house he lived. Madame Parangon, a charming woman, as she is described, was not happily married, and she evidently felt a tender affection for the boy whose excessive love and reverence for her were not always successfully concealed. "Madonna Parangon," he tells us, "possessed a charm which I could never resist, a pretty little foot; it is a charm which arouses more than tenderness. Her shoes, made in Paris, had that voluptuous elegance which seems to communicate soul and life. Sometimes Colette wore shoes ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... exquisite combination and effect. In addition to the numerous decorative pages and marvellous initials, there are portraits of the Evangelists and full-page miniatures of the Temptation of Christ, His Seizure by the Jews, and the Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels with censers. Exceptionally beautiful are these angels and other angelic figures throughout the book, their wings shining with glowing colors amid woven patterns of graceful design. The portraits and miniatures and the numerous ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... sides and centre of the window, and in the middle place hung a modern Madonna and Child. This Joyce could comprehend. Gaston knew the older, rarer ones would ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... quietly reading in my closet, when I was interrupted by the chambermaid of the Signora Laura Bono, who flung herself at my feet, and, in an agony of sobs and tears, begged me, for the love of the holy Madonna, to hasten to her master's house, where the two brothers would certainly murder one another, if my presence did not stop their fury. I was very much surprised, having always heard them spoken of as a pattern of fraternal union. However, I made all possible speed thither, without staying ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna—" Her eyes rested wistfully on her most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... with a Madonna over the fireplace and rows upon rows of books in covers of light gold and dark gold and shiny red. All the chairs had little lace squares where one's head should rest, the couch was just comfortable, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... "The Madonna be thanked that you are safe!" Katarina, now in her girl's dress, exclaimed as she seized his hand. "Oh, Monsieur Guy, how I have suffered! It was not until two o'clock that my father returned and told us that you were safe; I should never have forgiven myself if harm had come ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... receiving male visitors in her bedroom, and he was shy to find himself alone with Barbara and to see her lying in a blue silk kimono with the Persian kitten asleep on a chair by her side and two tables submerged by Madonna lilies. As he hesitated on the threshold, she smiled wistfully and at the same time with a certain triumphant confidence ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... fatigue of enjoying is greater than the enjoyment itself. To hear again, years afterward, an old melody, every note of which we supposed we had forgotten, and yet to recognize it as an old acquaintance; or, after the lapse of many years, to stand once more before the Sistine Madonna at Dresden, and experience afresh all the emotions which the infinite look of the child aroused in us for years; or to smell a flower or taste a dish again which we have not thought of since childhood—all these ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... Behind the cathedral are cloisters that the guide books mention; they inclose a courtyard that was once decorated with statues of saints. By some accident or miracle—there are always miracles in shelled towns—one of these images, perhaps that of the Madonna, has been lifted from its pedestal and thrown into the branches of a tree, which seems almost to ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... babe; the daughter from her original duty, in the pastoral age, of milking the cows. The lady was so-called from the social obligations entailed on the prosperous woman, of "loaf-giving," or dispensing charity to the less fortunate. As dame, madame, madonna, in the old days of aristocracy, she bore equal rank with the lord and master, and carried down to our better democratic age the co-partnership of civic and family ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... were sitting at this circular window. Ten Aprils had half ripened them. The boy had dark hair, and a touch of sunlight in his darker eyes. The girl was light and delicate—with a face of spiritual beauty, dream-like, heavenly, like the pictures of the Madonna which genius has hung on the chapel walls ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... His with reason bright— Should calm look down, in glory and in light, While Sion's palm beside should point to heaven. And God hath granted this fond prayer of mine: Thou, my Madonna, thou to me wert given, Divinest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Take first a few examples from the domain of art. The body and limbs of the Gladiator in the Louvre may be cited as the exponent of corporeal beauty; the face of the Apollo Belvedere as that of intellectual and physical; and the Santo Sisto Madonna of Raphael, and the Christ of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, for spiritual. Through these radiant creations we look into the transcendent minds of their artists with a chastened, exalting joy, not unmingled with pride in ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... to-night," Martigues whispered to her. "There is something I do not understand. You have the Madonna smile." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... time I saw Natalie, for owing to a mistake of my driver I had arrived rather late and had not been introduced to her. As her father's only daughter, her mother being dead, she was seated at the end of the table behind a fan-like arrangement of white Madonna lilies, and she had bent forward and, like the others, was looking at me, but in such a fashion that her head from that distance seemed as though it were surrounded and crowned with lilies. Indeed the greatest art could not have produced a more beautiful effect which was, however, really ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... a Florentine by birth and training, was patronized in turn by the Sforza family of Milan, by the Medici of Florence, and by the French royal line. His great paintings—the Holy Supper and Madonna Lisa, usually called La Gioconda—carried to a high degree the art of composition and the science of light and shade and color. In fact, Leonardo was a scientific painter—he carefully studied the laws of perspective ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of human auditors; and they would only have sorely perplexed and troubled the poor old man bedridden in his corner, who, for his part, whenever he had trodden the streets of Antwerp, had thought the daub of blue and red that they called a Madonna, on the walls of the wine-shop where he drank his sou's worth of black beer, quite as good as any of the famous altar-pieces for which the stranger folk travelled far and wide into Flanders from every land on which the ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... trimmings of ethereal blue. She wore no jewels, but a crown of golden hair gleamed like a coronet above her head, and her delicately molded face had a spirituelle beauty and radiance unlike any living face he had ever seen, and which he could only compare to the exquisite Madonna faces, painted by artists of the old world, and of the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... love-letters he instantly sees through. They are the scorpion—blotch feigned to issue miraculously from Madonna's mouth. And then Pompilia makes her appeal. "Take me to Rome!" The Madonna has turned her face upon him indeed, "to summon me and signify her choice," and he at once ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... to heap up facts, Lombroso fashion? Well, this is as good as most of Lombroso's facts, or better. I went up one morning, last winter, to work at a study of a Madonna from Marion, directly after breakfast, and left her below in the dining-room, putting away the breakfast things. She has to do that occasionally, between the local helps, who are all we can get in the winter. She professes to like it, but you never can tell, from what ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... at me curiously. Never in my experience of her sex had I seen any one who varied so quickly in appearance, who seemed to pass with such effortless facility from the girl with the Madonna-like face and dreamy eyes, to the thoughtful and scheming woman of the world. Her rapid changes were a torture to me! I felt the elusiveness of ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Triptych: The Madonna adoring, with the Archangels Michael, Raphael, and Tobit London: N.G., ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... save the old doctor, and later Kate's mother, become suddenly an old woman, broken by the terrible rumors which had penetrated her peaceful Bluegrass home. She was shocked beyond words to find her newly widowed daughter serene as some Madonna out of a painting, wrapped in a rose-colored dressing-gown that would better have ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... with grief and despair, distorted of figure and accusing of voice, held him back. A faint titter of derision went through the room. He turned on Rosie's comfortable back a look of black hate and fury. Then the Nurse gave him a gentle shove, and he was looking at Claribel—a white, Madonna-faced Claribel, lying now with closed eyes, her long lashes ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... shouted a fair-haired youth opposite, 'who has seen C. 's Holy Family? Who knows where he got his Madonna?' ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... how many hundredweight of silver were employed, but doubtless many thousands of dozens of French and German spoons, and hundreds of soup tureens and tea pots must have been melted down by the Cossacks in 1813 and 1814 as offerings to the Holy Mother of Kazan, this Madonna being held by them ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke—"what think you of this Madonna della Pieta?" ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... absorbed by it. He watched her. She was even lovelier than he had remembered; or rather her loveliness had been, in some subtle way, transmuted. Something had given to her a graver, nobler beauty. Last night's nymph had become the Madonna of this morning. Despite her dress, which was of a tremendous tartan, she diffused the pale authentic radiance of a spirituality most high, most simple. The Duke wondered where lay the change in her. He could ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... When I was at Koenigsberg the other day, it was permitted me to speak to her, and press my lips on her hand. With that kiss I devoted myself to her for my whole life, and she is ever before my eyes, clothed in a sort of divine beauty—as a Madonna holding the Messiah of Freedom in her arms! And the noble queen, to whom I pray every night as to a saint, sends me a present which she has made for me with her own hands? Oh, am I worthy of such kindness; ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... up some rugged footway between the loops of the road. Perspiring, even as I sat, in the blaze of the sun, I envied the boy his breath and muscle. Now and then he slaked his thirst at a stone fountain by the wayside, not without reverencing the blue-hooded Madonna painted over it. A few lean, brown peasants, bending under faggots, and one or two carts, passed us before we gained the top, and half-way up there was a hovel where drink could be bought; but with ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the Vatican, and the "Diotalevi Madonna" signed by the same artist, in the Berlin Museum, show the touch of Raphael, unmistakably. The youth was barely seventeen, but he was putting himself into Perugino's work—and Perugino was glad. Raphael's first independent work was probably done ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... grimy beside Grassmere. I was crying for the luxuries I had lost. I never told Bob the truth about that picture until last week, and all this time he's been looking upon me as an ideal woman—a kind of madonna, mother of little children, you understand, and all that—and I'm not. Something must be wrong with me. I don't even long to be—yet. Oh, you see how unfitted I am for a man to weave idealistic pictures about—like that. It seemed to ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... by the Mexican women, the jacal was transformed into a rustic bower; for Enrique was not only a favorite among the whites, but also among his own people. A few gaudy pictures of Saints and the Madonna ornamented the side walls, while in the rear hung the necessary crucifix. At the time of its building the jacal had been blessed, as was customary before occupancy, and to Enrique's reasoning the potency of the former sprinkling ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... studying the face, that had made summary shipwreck of his matrimonial fortune. No slightest detail escaped him; the burnished locks curled loosely around the forehead smooth as a sleeping baby's, the broad arch of the delicately-pencilled black brows, the Madonna droop of the lids whose heavy sable fringes deepened the bluish shadows beneath the eyes, the straight, flawless nose, the perfect chin with its deeply-incised dimple, the remarkably beautiful mouth, which despairing grief had kissed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... an early work; the admirable kneeling bronze effigy, 257, of Rene of Birague, a maturer production. The four cardinal virtues in oak were executed for the abbey church of St. Genevieve: they were originally covered with stucco and held on high the saint's reliquary. The too lachrymose Madonna in terra-cotta, 256, already ushers in the decadence. Portrait busts of Henry II., 227, the vicious Henry III., 253, and of the feeble Charles IX., 252, are also to be noted. Pilon's pupil, Bart. Prieur ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... back, at the end of his life, with an unchanged tenderness and disappointment: "Vous n'avez rien compris a ma simplicite," as he lamented. In the case of Dowson, however, there was a sort of virginal devotion, as to a Madonna; and I think, had things gone happily, to a conventionally happy ending, he would have felt (dare I say?) that his ideal had ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... dramas in both Portuguese and Castilian. A strong creative artist and thinker, Vicente is the greatest dramatist of Portugal and one of the great literary figures of the Peninsula. This Cancion to the Madonna occurs in El auto de la Sibila Casandra, a religious pastoral drama. Vicente himself wrote music for the song, which was intended to accompany a dance. John Bowring made a very good metrical translation of the song ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... heroic ones, and sweeten the reverie by the toil. So far as they go, the enjoyments of the healthy body are as innocent and as ardent as those of the soul. As there is no ground of comparison, so there is no ground of antagonism. How compare a sonata and a sea-bath or measure the Sistine Madonna against a gallop across country? The best thanksgiving for each is to enjoy the other also, and educate the mind to ampler nobleness. After all, the best verdict on athletic exercises was that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... on his road home. Yes, your excellence. You see it was the fete of the Madonna, and we danced and drank together—I and Peppino—all the night; and this morning about an hour ago says he to me, 'Gaetano, do you take your horses, and go find two travellers and a servant who are under a coach-house at the Croix d'Or; all is paid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... He looked on at her efforts with a feeling of deep compassion. Was not her face becoming soft like a mother's, lovely and round when she bent down to the children? The Madonna type—and still this ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... Garden Green. There came a time when he broke in upon the last five pound note of his savings. He realized the position without any actual misgivings. He denied himself regretfully a tiny mezzotint of the Raphael "Madonna," which he coveted for his mantelpiece. He also denied himself dinner for several evenings. When fortune knocked at his door he was, in fact, extraordinarily hungry. He still had faith, notwithstanding his difficulties, and ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this book on purpose,' said Philip. 'I wished to read you a description of that print from Raffaelle—you know it—the Madonna di San Sisto?' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prophetic. Feminine individualism was the cult of the hour. The younger generation had, through the doctrines of evolution, become atheistic. Strindberg tells of asking a young writer how he could get along without God. "We have woman instead," was the reply. This was the last stage of Madonna worship! And how had it happened that the new generation had replaced God with woman? "God was the remotest source; when he failed they grasped at the next, the mother. But then they should at least choose the real mother, ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... woodland, so fresh and pure were they. But I was not content to follow in the plain path he first taught me to tread. Merely correct drawing, merely correct colouring, were not sufficient for my ambition. I had dazzled my eyes with the loveliness of Correggio's 'Madonna,' and had marvelled at the wondrous blue of her robe—a blue so deep and intense that I used to think one might scrape away the paint till a hole was bored in the canvas and yet not reach the end of that fathomless azure tint; I had studied the warm hues of ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... white drawing-room where the only spots of colour were the roses—masses of pink roses in gold bowls—a Madonna-like being was reclining in a green and white billow of a lace tea gown, on a white sofa. She held out both hands to Mrs. Ess Kay, and looked at me, apologising for ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and presently found. She told me, in those sweet stolen rambles along the shore, when the moonlight made her look like a Madonna, that she was his inspiration—his art—his life. And she wept; she wept, and I kissed her ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... its golden curls, full and sunny face, wide open and sparkling eyes, is in the pictures at Cortona and Perugia depicted with rosy fingers in the act of blessing; in the "Madonna della Stella" He embraces His mother so closely that He almost hides Himself in her bosom; in the great azure-surrounded tabernacle of the Linen Guild, He is smiling; while in the fresco of the corridor at San Marco, He has an ingenuous wondering gaze as He holds forth His little ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... creature's name—"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, "as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady—Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph—Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude—Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bon garcon. A Spanish student, in a velvet coat and with long black hair, insisted upon charcoaling mustachios and imperial upon his host's countenance, in honor of his countryman who had distinguished himself as a patron of art. Later, a laughing girl whose blue-black hair was banded Madonna-wise around a head considerably otherwise, washed it off with a table napkin dipped in wine. She sat on his knee to perform the operation, scanned his clean face with satisfaction, and taking him by the ears ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... murmured at last; and, as though the one word had broken a charm which held them both paralyzed, she smiled, and the smile lit up the Madonna face and made it as human as it had ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Acts, shows. Its use here may be a trace of a touching desire to make sure that readers, who only knew him as Matthew, should understand who this publican was. It is like the little likenesses of themselves, in some corner of a background, that early painters used to slip into a picture of Madonna and angels. There was no vanity in the wish, for he says nothing about his sacrifices, leaving it to Luke to tell that 'he left all,' but he does crave that his brethren, who read, should know that it was he whom Jesus honoured by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... sat down with it by his lamp. A strange array of rings was there, small and delicate, huge, bizarre; great signet rings and poison rings, love tokens, charms and amulets, rings which had been worn by wives, by mistresses, by favorite slaves and by young girls in convents; rings with the Madonna and rings with many other saints graven on large heavy stones; rings French and Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Syrian. Some were many centuries old. In nine shallow metal trays they filled the safe ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... which Ottavia and Benedetta crept. The three then prowled along the city wall of Monza, till they found a breach wide enough for exit. Afterwards they took a path beside the river Lambro, and stopped for awhile at the church of the Madonna delle Grazie. Here the sisters prayed for assistance from our Lady in their journey, and recited the Salve Regina seven times. Then they resumed their walk along the Lambro, and at a certain point Ottavia ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... single case where the shepherd maids who saw Her described Her otherwise than as a 'beautiful lady' with the features of the Virgin of a village altar, a Madonna of the Saint-Sulpice ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... The greatest work of all, and by far the grandest picture which, up to that time, had been executed in Italy, was the "Last Supper," painted on the wall of the refectory, or dining-room, of the Dominican convent of the Madonna delle Grazie. It occupied Leonardo about two years, from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Cornice. Corridor. Cupola. Curvet. Dilettante. Ditto. Doge. Domino. Extravaganza. Fiasco. Folio. Fresco. Gazette. Gondola. Granite. Grotto. Guitar. Incognito. Influenza. Lagoon. Lava. Lazaretto. Macaroni. Madonna. Madrigal. Malaria. Manifesto. Motto. Moustache. Niche. Opera. Oratorio. Palette. Pantaloon. Parapet. Pedant. Pianoforte. Piazza. Pistol. Portico. Proviso. Quarto. Regatta. Ruffian. Serenade. Sonnet. Soprano. Stanza. Stiletto. Stucco. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... when face to face with the artist. One would then meet a slender, graceful young woman, of gentle presence and with the simplest manners in the world. The dark, liquid eyes look at one with frankness and sincerity; the wide, low brow, from which the dark hair is softly drawn away, is the brow of a madonna. In repose the features might easily belong to one of Raphael's saints. However, they light up genially when ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... how to persuade her to marriage. A few months later she became Madame d'Artigou; they say she gave her husband no affection, and that her heart was still, and always, Liszt's; while in his heart she was for ever niched as the young Madonna of his life. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... sorry for, as she saw that the bed of the other two was furnished with a holy water stoup and a little shrine with a waxen Madonna. There was only one looking-glass among the four, and not much apparatus either for washing or the toilet, but Miss Bridgeman believed that they would soon go to Richmond, where things would be more comfortable. Then she turned to consult Miss Dunord on her endeavour to improve the trimmings ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... window-frame, and he saw the fine line of her jaw, the hollows in her cheek, the delicate modeling about her brows, not obscured by much eyebrow, and her long, stretched throat. She was not quite maternal enough to look like a Madonna, but she did look like a ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... that also in Italy. And we put a leetla picture of the Christ child on the table. (Puts colored picture of Madonna and ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... Mrs. J. Burton Francis sat, at peace with herself and all mankind. The glory of the short winter afternoon streamed into the room and touched with new warmth and tenderness the face of a Madonna on ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... when I was longing to lead her to the altar, I daresay I only thought of her as an inspiration to my better self and my best impulses. She was to me what the Madonna is to a good Catholic; but now she has become something more than that. The distance between us no longer exists; I cannot be satisfied with mere adoration, I must love; I cannot be satisfied with ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... madonna face, than which I have never seen a more beautiful, more enchanting—either before or since ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Egypt, but her worship spread rapidly abroad, like that of Mithra. It became the popular devotion of Italy; and, after a change of name due to the growth of Christianity, she has continued to receive the adoration of a large part of Europe down to the present day as the Madonna. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... mission. In the letters which Xavier wrote home about this time we have his early impressions concerning the Japanese. The princess took great interest in the subjects discussed by Anjiro, and was especially struck with a picture of the Madonna and child which he showed her. She asked to have the heads of the Christian faith put in writing in order that she might study them. For this reason a creed and a catechism were prepared and translated into the Japanese language, for the use of the princess and other enquirers. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... have been the room of a business man who was at the same time a priest and a scholar. There were roller maps upon the walls, and two or three engravings, Bougereau's "Virgin of Consolation," the "Madonna dei Ansidei" of Raffaelle, and a "Crucifixion" over the chimneypiece, which had three little statuettes in tinted alabaster—a St. Ignatius at one end, a St. Anthony of Padua at the other; in the middle, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... blessing of God upon the Devil's work, which they were about to commit. The Bletto bore a standard, one side of which was emblazoned with the crucified Saviour, and the other with the Virgin Mary. The image of Him who said, "Love-your enemies," and the gentle face of the Madonna, were to smile from heaven upon deeds which might cause a shudder in the depths of hell. Their brief orisons concluded, they swept forward to the city. Three thousand Spaniards, under their Eletto, were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had appeared, with half a dozen men walking behind it. In a trice, two of them had stretched a wire trellis across one wall of the drawing-room, and two more were trailing roses from floor to ceiling. Others tied the dark wood of the stair railing with tall Madonna lilies; then they hung garlands of flowers from corner to corner and, alas! could not refrain from framing the mirror in smilax, nor from hanging the chandeliers with that same ugly, funereal, and artificial-looking vine,—this idea ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... them to be at once remedied. During the alterations made about one hundred and twenty years ago, the monument of a Knight Hospitaller was found, and within the last few years small pieces of carved stone have been dug up—amongst others, a Madonna's head with traces of blue and gold still upon it; a monk kneeling, and a knight and lady hand in hand. The Abbey is now the property of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... unobtrusive manner a consciousness of being well dressed. His face, which was not without fine possibilities, had an air of well-bred neutrality; you could see that he assumed a defensive attitude against aesthetic impressions,—that even the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo would not have surprised him into anything like enthusiasm or abject approval. It was evident, too, that he was a little bit ashamed of his Baedeker, which he consulted only in a semi-surreptitious way, and plunged into the pocket of his ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... during a violent storm that swept over that region of the Vosges, among the great quantity of hailstones that fell at the time a certain number were found split in two. On the inner face of each of the halves, according to the local papers that appeared the next day, was the image of the Madonna venerated at Remiremont and known as Notre Dame du Tresor. The local Catholics regarded it as a reply to the municipal council's veto of the procession in honour of the Virgin. So many people testified ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... several valuable publications in the field of diplomacy, announced in his work, Aldo Manuzio, Lettres et Documents, 1494-1515, Venice, 1867, that he had been engaged for years on a biography of Madonna Lucretia Borgia, and had collected for the purpose a large ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... and dimpled like those of a child, were clasped around a prayer-book and a bunch of wild flowers which had evidently just been gathered. It was a marvelously beautiful face, pure and sweet as that of a Madonna, and the workmen involuntarily bowed their heads before it, calling it, not without some reason, a memorial window, for the name Gretchen was under the picture, and one unconsciously found himself looking for the date of birth and death. But only the one word 'Gretchen' ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy—my mother a peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills. When she was young she was beautiful—like a Madonna by an ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pious negro, and his behaviour during his imprisonment enlisted the respect of every one in jail. Singular as the taste may seem, he had his corner in the cell decorated with little framed prints. Among them we noticed one of the crucifixion, and another of the Madonna. After reading the chapters, they retired to their hard beds. About nine o'clock the next morning, Daley came to the door with a piece of neck meat, so tainted and bloody that its smell and looks more than satisfied ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... few hours had done much to metamorphose me, certes, they had done something for my fair friends also; anything more unlike what they appeared in the morning can scarcely be imagined. Matilda in black, with her hair in heavy madonna bands upon her fair cheek, now paler even than usual, never seemed so handsome; while Fanny, in a light-blue dress, with blue flowers in her hair, and a blue sash, looked the most lovely piece of coquetry ever man set his eyes upon. The old major, too, was smartened up, and put ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the heavy railroad grade. About a mile short of the town, we made a digression to an Italian vineyard of note. There, at a long table under a vine-covered trellis that connected the stone cellar with the dwelling-house, we were served with wine by a young woman having the true Madonna features of Sunny Italy, her mother, a comely matron, in the meantime preparing the evening meal, while on the hard ground encumbered with no superfluous clothing, disported the younger members of the family. And as I ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... at Kazan, on the Volga, amused me enormously. We were staying at a most indifferent hotel kept by a Frenchman. The French proprietor explained to us that July was the month during which the miraculous Ikon of the Kazan Madonna was carried from house to house by the priests. The fees for this varied from 25 roubles (then 2 pounds 10s.) for a short visit from the Ikon of five minutes, to 200 roubles (20 pounds) for the privilege of sheltering the miracle-working picture ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... and for a couple of days we did nothing but lounge around. We took a walk through Albert to see the statue of the Madonna and the infant Jesus. It hung right over the road, and it is marvellous how long it stayed there without being hit. The French people used to say that when it fell the war would end, but it has been down some time and the war is not over yet. They put us on fatigues and working ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... soft hands about her, bathing her face with something fragrantly cool and refreshing. She opened her eyes and looked up to find Elisabeth's face bent over her—unspeakably kind and tender, like that of some Madonna brooding ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... sausages. A chain of hills commands the city, variegated with green inclosures and villas innumerable, almost every one of which has its grove of chestnuts and cypresses. On the highest acclivity of this range appears the magnificent convent of Madonna del Monte, embosomed in wood, and joined to the town by a corridor a league in length. This vast portico, ascending the steeps and winding amongst the thickets, sometimes concealed and sometimes visible, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... sarcophagus said to be that of S. Exuperantius, bishop of Ravenna about 470. The magnificent tomb carved in high relief did not, however, belong to the old cathedral, but was brought here when the church of S. Agnese was destroyed. In the south transept is the chapel of the Madonna del Sudore, where on either side are two other sarcophagi of marble adorned with figures and symbols. That on the right is said to be the tomb of S. Barbatianus, confessor of Galla Placidia, and was originally in the church ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton |
