The great religious masters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gathered around them crowds of scholars, who travelled with them from city to city, partaking in their commissions and executing their designs, especially of ex-voto pictures, multiplied in that age by the piety of noble families, to commemorate some special interposition of divine power in their behalf and to honor their patron saints.

When other figures are introduced, they are generally either the protecting saints of the country or locality, or the saints of the Religious Order to whom the edifice belongs: or, where the picture or window is an ex-voto, we find the patron saints of the confraternity, or of the donor or votary who has dedicated it.

There are some ex-voto pictures of the Madonna of Mercy, which record individual acts of gratitude.

All who have visited the church of the Frari at Venice will rememberfor once seen, they never can forgetthe ex-voto altar-piece which adorns the chapel of the Pesaro family.

(Vienna, Belvedere Gal.) Ex-voto pictures in this style are very interesting, and the votary, without any striking impropriety, makes one of the Arcadian group.