3-011-347 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

''The Offering'', by F. Wyburd, in the Exhibition of the British Institution, 1864. Engraving of a painting. 'What offering is it the painter would have us chiefly understand...Is it the floral wreath, the coronal of blushing roses...the favourite and appropriate emblematical decoration chosen by the Church of Rome for the Holy Virgin...and which our pretty, devout maiden - virgin herself, and almost saintly in her prayerful simplicity - has placed at the feet of some effigy of the Madonna...we think the painter may...imply a deeper meaning. We may also...think of that more acceptible offering, the modest, earnest, heartfelt prayer of a youthful, innocent maiden, worshipping...in the way of her fathers. The lowly peasant condition of the girl, notwithstanding the broidered bravery of her Swiss or Bohemian pelisse, the graceful, delicate beauty of her face, the sweet ingenuousness of her expression, the absorbed unconscious reverence of her attitude, all invite us to think of the spirituality of her offering. That she is paying her tribute of adoration to the Virgin is evident from other circumstances besides the wreath, such as the telling of the beads of her rosary, the kneeling on the rush prie-dieu chair, the prayerful, upturned eyes'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.