During the Carolingian period, the Virgin Mary had primarily been represented alone with arms raised in prayer. More rarely the theme was the Madonna with the Christi child, although, according to legend, the evangelist Luke had painted such a picture. For artists of this era, the Christian gospel of the renunciation of earthly things was determinative. The eyes of there chaste and pale faces do not long for earthly pleasures, but gaze, foreboding future suffering, wit melancholy piety into the infinite. In this resignation and perfect renunciation of all earthly joys, they embody the ethical content, the innermost spirit of Christianity. Early Sienese painters were the first to endow Mary with mysticism and a dreamy sentimentality. The Virgin Mary is frequently shown holding an open book, symbolic of her submission to Gods Holy Law. Their Madonna's are  principally the most interesting and beguiling in the history of art. With Giotto and the start of early Renaissance the depiction of the Virgin Mary began to change.  According to the author of 'The Madonna in Art', Estelle M. Hurll "With the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, the old style of portrait Madonna passed out of vogue. More elaborate backgrounds were introduced from the growing resources of technique. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, pictures of the portrait style were comparatively rare. Raphael, however, was not above adopting this method, as every lover of the Granduca Madonna will remember. His friend Bartolommeo also selected this style of composition for some of the loveliest of his works."