laced, and tassled. The Infant holds a prosaic "schnuller" or baby-soother in His right hand, whilst the siskin is perched on the top of His raised forearm. Of the wreath-bearing angels, one displays an almost bald head, and the background is full of unrest. Even the little label bearing the artist's name, by which old masters were wont to mark their pictures, and which in Bellini's case, for instance, appears plain and flatly fixed, bends up, like the little films of gelatine, which by their movements are thought to betray the holder's temperament.
One of the tests of great Art is its appearance of inevitableness: in that the artist vies with the creator:
"The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line."
There are a good many "lines" in the "Siskin" Madonna which bear cancelling:
