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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44033 ***
+
+  MASTERPIECES
+  IN COLOUR
+  EDITED BY - -
+  T. LEMAN HARE
+
+
+  RAPHAEL
+
+  1483-1520
+
+
+
+
+  "MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES
+
+
+    ARTIST.                  AUTHOR.
+  VELAZQUEZ.             S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  REYNOLDS.              S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  TURNER.                C. LEWIS HIND.
+  ROMNEY.                C. LEWIS HIND.
+  GREUZE.                ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
+  BOTTICELLI.            HENRY B. BINNS.
+  ROSSETTI.              LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+  BELLINI.               GEORGE HAY.
+  FRA ANGELICO.          JAMES MASON.
+  REMBRANDT.             JOSEF ISRAELS.
+  LEIGHTON.              A. LYS BALDRY.
+  RAPHAEL.               PAUL G. KONODY.
+  HOLMAN HUNT.           MARY E. COLERIDGE.
+  TITIAN.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  MILLAIS.               A. LYS BALDRY.
+  CARLO DOLCI.           GEORGE HAY.
+  GAINSBOROUGH.          MAX ROTHSCHILD.
+  TINTORETTO.            S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  LUINI.                 JAMES MASON.
+  FRANZ HALS.            EDGCUMBE STALEY.
+  VAN DYCK.              PERCY M. TURNER.
+  LEONARDO DA VINCI.     M. W. BROCKWELL.
+  RUBENS.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  WHISTLER.              T. MARTIN WOOD.
+  HOLBEIN.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  BURNE-JONES.           A. LYS BALDRY.
+  VIGÉE LE BRUN.         C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+  CHARDIN.               PAUL G. KONODY.
+  FRAGONARD.             C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+  MEMLINC.               W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
+  CONSTABLE.             C. LEWIS HIND.
+  RAEBURN.               JAMES L. CAW.
+  JOHN S. SARGENT.       T. MARTIN WOOD.
+  LAWRENCE.              S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  DÜRER.                 H. E. A. FURST.
+  MILLET.                PERCY M. TURNER.
+  WATTEAU.               C. LEWIS HIND.
+  HOGARTH.               C. LEWIS HIND.
+  MURILLO.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  WATTS.                 W. LOFTUS HARE.
+  INGRES.                A. J. FINBERG.
+  COROT.                 SIDNEY ALLNUTT.
+  DELACROIX.             PAUL G. KONODY.
+
+  _Others in Preparation._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE ANSIDEI MADONNA. Frontispiece
+
+(In the National Gallery, London)
+
+Better than any other picture by Raphael, this important altar-piece
+shows the precociousness of Raphael's genius, for it was painted at
+Perugia in 1506, when the master had scarcely passed into the
+twenty-third year of his life. He had then just returned from Florence,
+but, probably to humour his patrons, the Ansidei family, he reverted in
+this picture once again to the formal manner of his second master,
+Perugino. The "Ansidei Madonna" has the distinction of being the most
+costly picture at the National Gallery--it was purchased in 1885 from
+the Duke of Marlborough for £70,000.]
+
+
+
+
+  RAPHAEL
+
+  BY PAUL G. KONODY
+
+  ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+  REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+  [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM]
+
+  LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+  NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Plate
+     I. The Ansidei Madonna               Frontispiece
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+                                                  Page
+    II. The Madonna del Gran Duca                   14
+          In the Pitti Palace, Florence
+
+   III. The Madonna della Sedia                     24
+          In the Pitti Palace, Florence
+
+    IV. "La Belle Jardinière"                       34
+          In the Louvre
+
+     V. The Madonna of the Tower                    40
+          In the National Gallery, London
+
+    VI. Pope Julius II.                             50
+          In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
+
+   VII. Putto with Garland                          60
+          In the Academy of St. Luca, Rome
+
+  VIII. Portrait of Raphael                         70
+          In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"And I tell you that to paint one beautiful woman, I should need to see
+several beautiful women, and to have you with me to choose the best,"
+wrote Raphael, then at the zenith of his fame and good fortune, to his
+life-long friend Count Baldassare Castiglione, who--the ideal courtier
+himself--has given the world that immortal monument of Renaissance
+culture, the Book of the Courtier. In penning these lines the prince of
+painters intended, perhaps, no more than a pretty compliment to one who
+was himself a model of courtesy and graceful speech, but the words
+would gain deep significance if _picture_ were substituted for _woman_,
+and if Castiglione were taken to signify the personification of
+intellect and learning. For the beauty of Raphael's art, which in the
+course of four centuries has lost none of its hold upon the admiration
+of mankind, is distilled from the various elements of beauty contained
+in the art that had gone before him and was being created around him;
+and in choosing the best, at least as far as idea and conception are
+concerned, he was guided by the deepest thinkers and keenest intellects
+of what were then the world's greatest centres of culture.
+
+Raphael was, indeed, born under a happy constellation. He was not a
+giant of intellect, nor an epoch-making genius; as Michelangelo said of
+him, he owed his art less to nature than to study; but he was born at a
+time when two centuries of gradual artistic development had led up to a
+point where an artist was needed to gather up the diverging threads and
+bring the movement to a culmination, which will stand for all times as
+a standard of perfection. Advantages of birth and early surroundings,
+charm of appearance and disposition which made him a favourite wherever
+he went, receptivity, adaptability, and application, and above all an
+early and easy mastery of technique, were combined in Raphael to lead
+him to this achievement. The smooth unclouded progress of his life from
+recognition to fame, from prosperity to affluence, is not the turbulent
+way of genius. Genius walks a sad and lonely path. Michelangelo, the
+turbulent spirit, morose and dissatisfied, Lionardo da Vinci, pursuing
+his high ideals without a thought of worldly success until his lonely
+old age sees him expatriated and contemplating the fruitlessness of all
+his labours--these men of purest genius have little in common with the
+pliant courtier Raphael, the head himself of a little court of faithful
+followers. The story goes that Michelangelo, in the bitterness of his
+spirit, when meeting his happy rival at the head of his usual army of
+some fifty dependants on his way to the Papal court, addressed him with
+the words "You walk like the sheriff with his _posse comitatus_." And
+Raphael, quick at repartee, retorted "And you, like an executioner
+going to the scaffold." Whether the anecdote be true or not, it marks
+the difference between the course of talent--albeit the rarest
+talent--and that of genius.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE MADONNA DEL GRAN DUCA
+
+(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)
+
+This picture, remarkable for the effective simplicity of its design and
+for the purity of the Virgin's face, derives the name by which it is
+commonly known from the fact that it was bought in 1799 by the Grand
+Duke Ferdinand III. from a poor widow, and held by him in such esteem
+that he would never part from it and always took it with him on his
+travels. At one time it was actually credited with the power of working
+miracles. It is one of the first works of Raphael's Florentine period,
+and now hangs in the Pitti Palace, Florence.]
+
+What are the qualities of Raphael's art that have carried his fame
+unsullied through the ages and made him the most popular, the most
+admired, of all painters? The greatest of the primitives, and of the
+later masters Velazquez, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Watteau, to mention
+only a few of the brightest beacons in the realm of art, have at some
+time or other been eclipsed and held in slight esteem. Raphael alone
+escaped the inconstancy of popular favour; he was set up as an idol
+before he left the world to mourn his untimely death, and in the course
+of the years the world's idolatrous worship was extended even to the
+feeble handiwork of his assistants, which often passed under his name.
+Only within the memory of living men did this blind and
+indiscriminating worship lead to a reaction as indiscriminating. But
+this reaction was confined to a comparatively small circle of
+æsthetically inclined art enthusiasts; and to-day, when the more
+scientific methods of criticism have succeeded in sifting the wheat
+from the chaff--the master's own work from the factory-like production
+of his bottega--he has been reinstated in all his former glory.
+Contemptuous hostility to Raphael's art has ceased to be a fashionable
+pose. The frank acknowledgment of the perfection of this art is no
+longer stayed by the consciousness of the harm done by that imperfect
+imitation of the Raphaelic code of beauty, which has been the result of
+all academic teaching in Europe since the founding of the Prix de Rome.
+
+Beauty, formal beauty, pure and faultless, must appeal to everybody;
+and Raphael means to us the perfection of beauty--such beauty as lies
+in rhythm, balance, colour, form, and execution. It is a calculated
+beauty, the lucid, unambiguous expression of an absolutely normal,
+well-balanced mind assisted by an unerring hand; hence it is
+intelligible to everybody without that unconscious mental effort which
+is needed for the understanding of an art of greater emotional
+intensity. It is of the very essence of art that it should express an
+emotion; a picture which is merely imitative without holding a hint of
+what the artist felt at the time of creating it, ceases to be a work of
+art, even if it represents a subject beautiful in itself. On the other
+hand, an ugly subject may be raised to sublime art by emotional
+statement; but this emotion is of necessity more complex and more
+difficult to understand than that simplest of all emotions, the
+pleasure caused by the contemplation of beauty. This accounts for the
+common fallacy that art and beauty are indissolubly connected, and for
+the favouritism shown by all the successive generations to Raphael
+whose brush was wedded to beauty in the classic sense, and whose art
+knew nothing of the beauty of character.
+
+But beauty alone does not constitute Raphael's greatness, or Bouguereau
+and many other modern academic painters would have to be accounted
+great instead of being merely dull and insipid. Raphael developed to
+its utmost power of expressiveness the art of space-composition, the
+secret of which was the heritage of the Umbrian painters. What
+space-composition means cannot be better defined than it has been by
+Mr. Berenson: "Space-composition differs from ordinary composition in
+the first place most obviously in that it is not an arrangement to be
+judged as extending only laterally, or up and down on a flat surface,
+but as extending inwards in depth as well. It is composition in three
+dimensions, and not in two, in the cube, not merely on the surface....
+Painted space-composition opens out the space it frames in, puts
+boundaries only ideal to the roof of heaven. All that it uses, whether
+the forms of the natural landscape, or of grand architecture, or even
+of the human figure, it reduces to be its ministrants in conveying a
+sense of untrammelled, but not chaotic spaciousness. In such pictures,
+how freely one breathes--as if a load had just been lifted from one's
+breast; how refreshed, how noble, how potent one feels; again, how
+soothed; and still again, how wafted forth to abodes of far-away
+bliss!"
+
+This sense of space and depth is achieved by methods which have nothing
+in common with our modern art of creating the illusion of what is
+called "atmosphere"--not by the "losing and finding" of contours, not
+by the application of optical theories, such as the zone of
+interchanging rays which dissolves all hard outlines, nor by the
+blurring and fogging of the distance. Space-composition in the sense in
+which it was practised by Raphael is closely akin to the art of
+architecture in its appeal to our emotions.
+
+As an illustrator, again, Raphael was unequalled as regards clear,
+direct, measured statement of all that is essential to the immediate
+grasping of the idea or incident depicted. The first glance at one of
+Raphael's works, whether it be a small panel picture or a monumental
+fresco, reveals its whole purport, and that in a manner so complete and
+lucid and convincing as could not be achieved by any other method of
+expression. With infallible sureness he invariably found the shortest
+way for the harmonious statement of idea, form, and emotion, which in
+his work are always found in perfect balance and so completely
+permeated by each other as to constitute an indissoluble trinity.
+
+Another reason for Raphael's powerful appeal--and in this he is perhaps
+the most typical child of his period--is that his art unites in one
+majestic current the two greatest movements of thought which have ever
+fired the imagination of civilised Europe; classic antiquity and
+Christian faith, when treated by Raphael's brush, cease to be
+incompatible and live side by side in that measured harmony which is
+the hall-mark of his art. Christianity is presented to us in the
+glorious classic garb of the old world, and the myth and philosophy of
+the ancients are brought into intimate relationship with Christian
+teaching. He infuses new blood and life into the stones of ancient
+Greece and Rome--unlike Mantegna who had remained cold and classic in
+his relief-like reconstructions of antiquity; just as he accentuates
+the human emotional side of the Madonna and Child _motif_ by discarding
+all hieroglyphic symbolism and setting before our eyes the intimate
+link of love that connects mother and babe. Almost imperceptibly his
+cupids are transformed into child angels, and the Jehovah of his
+"Vision of Ezekiel" has more in common with Olympian Jove than with
+the mediæval conception of the Lord of Heaven.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--THE MADONNA DELLA SEDIA
+
+(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)
+
+The Madonna "of the Chair," one of the most characteristic and
+deservedly popular of Raphael's numerous versions of the Virgin and
+Child _motif_, belongs to the master's full maturity, and was painted
+during his sojourn in Rome, at the time when he was occupied with the
+stupendous task of decorating the _Stanze_ of the Vatican. It would be
+difficult to find in the whole history of art a more pleasing solution
+of the problem presented by a figure composition in the round. The
+picture is now in the Pitti Palace, Florence.]
+
+Just as Timoteo Viti, Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, Lionardo da Vinci,
+Masaccio, Michelangelo, and Sebastiano del Piombo (who imparted to him
+something of the glow of Venetian colouring), had been the sources from
+which Raphael drew his knowledge of technique, colour, composition, and
+all the elements of pictorial style, so the humanists had paved his way
+as regards the intellectual aspect of his art. His marvellous faculty
+of rapid assimilation enabled him, on the one hand, to appropriate
+whatever he found worthy of imitation in his precursors and
+contemporaries, and thus to complete his technical equipment at an age
+at which it was given to few to have achieved mastery; whilst, on the
+other hand, his clear intellect, aided by the not entirely unmercenary
+desire to please his patrons, helped him to carry out with
+triumphant success the ideas evolved by the keenest thinkers of his
+time. To doubt that the general idea, and perhaps a good many of the
+details, of such a stupendous work as the fresco decoration of the
+_Stanze_ at the Vatican, had originated in Raphael's head, is not to
+detract from his greatness. He was a boy in his early teens when he
+entered his first master's bottega. He was a youth of twenty-five when
+he started on his great task; and the intervening years had been so
+completely filled with the study of his craft and with the execution of
+important commissions, that it is impossible to believe he could have
+found much leisure for book-learning. And such learning was
+indispensable for the conception of that elaborate scheme with all its
+historical allusions and allegorical imagery. The wonder is that
+Raphael could so completely enter into the suggestions made to him
+from various sources, and to weave them into a tissue of immortal
+beauty.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+At the end of the fifteenth century the rule of the Duke Federigo of
+Montefeltre, an enlightened prince who devoted the best of his energy
+and such time as he could spare from his duties on the battlefield to
+the patronage of the arts, to the adornment of his noble palace, and to
+the collecting of priceless manuscripts, paintings, antiques, and works
+of art of every description, had raised the old city of Urbino to one
+of the centres of culture and learning, and made the ducal court a
+gathering-place for the distinguished painters, architects, poets, and
+humanists who were attracted by the wealth and liberality of this great
+patron. Among the less distinguished satellites attracted by the sun
+of Montefeltre was one Giovanni Santi, who had come to Urbino in the
+middle of the fifteenth century. Though a painter of considerable
+skill, trained perhaps by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, he found it necessary in
+the early days of his sojourn at Urbino to supplement his modest income
+by trading in oil and corn and other commodities, as his father had
+done before him. But his varied accomplishments soon brought him into
+prominence and secured him a position as court painter and poet. More
+important than any of the pictures that have come to us from his brush
+is his famous rhyming chronicle of 23,000 verses in Dantesque measure,
+in which he glorifies the virtues and exploits of his patron. He was a
+special favourite of Elisabetta Gonzaga, the youthful spouse of
+Federigo's son Guidobaldo, whose high esteem for Giovanni is expressed
+in a letter in which she informs her sister-in-law of the court
+painter's death.
+
+To this Giovanni Santi and to his wife Magia Ciarla was born on Good
+Friday, the 28th of March[1] 1483, a son who was destined in the
+comparatively short span of his life to rise to fame such as has been
+the share of few mortals. An elder brother and sister of Raphael had
+died in infancy, and his mother followed them to the grave before he
+had reached his eighth year. Her place in the paternal home was taken
+by Bernardina Parte, a goldsmith's daughter, whom Giovanni wedded soon
+after his first wife's death. From Giovanni Santi's great poem it would
+appear that he was on terms of friendship and intimacy with some of the
+greatest masters of the time, such as Melozzo da Forli, Mantegna, Pier
+dei Franceschi, and Verrocchio; and it is reasonable to assume that
+Raphael's earliest art education under his father's guidance tended
+towards the development of that peculiar faculty which enabled him
+later on to seize and assimilate the excellences in the style of the
+various masters with whom he came in contact.
+
+  Footnote 1: The wording of Raphael's epitaph, which states that he
+  died on the same day (of the year) on which he was born, has led some
+  writers to the assumption that he was born on April 6, whereas it is
+  merely meant to signify that he was born and died on Good Friday.
+
+The ease with which his precocious talent absorbed the teaching of his
+masters became evident when, soon after his father's death, in 1494,
+from fever contracted in the malarial air of the Mantuan marshland,
+whither he had gone in the service of Elisabetta Gonzaga, he entered
+the bottega of Francia's pupil Timoteo Viti (or della Vite), who
+settled at Urbino in 1495, and whose eminent position among the
+painters of that city must have suggested to Raphael's guardian--his
+maternal uncle Simone Ciarla--the desirability of placing the youth
+under such competent tuition. And so thoroughly did Raphael acquire
+not only his first master's style, but even such of his mannerisms as
+the broad shape of hands and feet and the languid turn of the heads,
+that from such internal evidence Morelli, the originator of the modern
+method of criticism, was able after more than three centuries of error
+to disprove Vasari's assertion that Raphael passed straight from his
+father's workshop into that of Perugino. Timoteo's influence is
+apparent even in works painted by Raphael at a time when he had come
+under the spell of the more powerful personality of Perugino, like the
+"Sposalizio" or "Betrothal of the Virgin," of 1504, in the Brera
+Gallery in Milan; but it is unmistakably in evidence in the three
+earliest pictures that bear Raphael's name: the "Vision of a Knight,"
+at the National Gallery, the "St. Michael," at the Louvre, and the
+"Three Graces," at Chantilly. Not only the features which connect this
+group of pictures with the style of Timoteo Viti, but the timid
+meticulous execution and the naïve stiffness of the figures, mark them
+as works of Raphael's immature youth. The turn of the century, as we
+shall see, found Raphael at Perugia, so that the three pictures
+mentioned must have been painted before he had attained the age of
+seventeen. The panel of the "Three Graces," which, by the way, was
+obviously inspired by an antique cameo, was bought in 1885 by the Duc
+d'Aumale from Lord Dudley's collection for £25,000--surely a price
+without parallel for a work painted by a lad of sixteen! A portrait in
+chalk of the marvellously gifted, winsome boy by the hand of his first
+master is preserved at the University Galleries in Oxford.
+
+The records of a lawsuit between some members of his family prove that
+Raphael was still at Urbino in 1499, since in the summer of this year
+he appeared as a witness in court. When the verdict was given in the
+following year, he had already left for Perugia to continue his studies
+as an assistant of Perugino. Again we find him before long assimilating
+the style of his new master so successfully and completely that, to use
+Vasari's words, "His copies cannot be distinguished from the original
+works of the master, nor can the difference between the performances of
+Raphael and those of Pietro be discerned with any certainty."
+Plagiarism in those days did not trouble the artistic conscience, and
+it is easy to trace in Raphael's pictures of that period entire groups
+that are borrowed from the elder master. Thus the "Crucifixion,"
+painted about 1501 for a church in Città di Castello, and now in the
+collection of Dr. Ludwig Mond, is obviously based on Perugino's version
+of the same subject at St. Augustine's, Siena, whilst the whole upper
+part of the Vatican "Coronation of the Virgin" is "lifted" from an
+"Assumption" by Pietro. But this almost literal imitation was only a
+passing phase, whilst the great lesson of space-composition and the
+typically Umbrian gift of almost religious fervour in stating the
+peaceful glory of the Umbrian hill-land, which had been imparted to
+Raphael at Perugia, remained permanent acquisitions to his art.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE
+
+(In the Louvre)
+
+"La Belle Jardinière" is a magnificent example of Raphael's Florentine
+style, which came from his being influenced by Leonardo da Vinci when
+at Florence (see the triangular composition). The Virgin's mantle was
+probably finished by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio; other parts--the hands and
+the feet--are hardly finished; nevertheless it is one of the finest,
+most expressive, and touching Madonnas by the Master.]
+
+In 1502 Perugino went back to Florence, and Raphael probably joined
+Pinturicchio's staff of assistants, though Vasari's statement that he
+furnished the designs for the latter master's frescoes in the
+Piccolomini Library at Siena may be dismissed as a fable. During this
+time Raphael painted his first Madonna pictures, notably the
+"Conestabile Madonna" (now at St. Petersburg), which is based entirely
+on Perugino's "Virgin with the Pomegranate," and two panels at the
+Berlin Museum. The Milan "Sposalizio," in which the young master's
+personality already asserts itself through the very marked Ferrarese
+and Peruginesque influences, was painted in 1504 for the church of St.
+Francesco at Città di Castello. His early mastery in portraiture is
+illustrated by his portrait of Perugino at the Borghese Gallery, which
+is so firm in character and perfect in execution that it could pass for
+many years as the handiwork of Holbein.
+
+Meanwhile Duke Guidobaldo had returned to Urbino after the death of his
+enemy, Pope Alexander VI., and thither Raphael proceeded in 1504. The
+little "St. George" at the Louvre is a memento of this short visit
+which terminated in October of the same year, when Raphael, armed with
+a letter of warmest recommendation from Guidobaldo's sister Giovanna
+della Rovere to the Gonfaloniere Pier Soderini, left his native town
+for Florence, then the centre of artistic life, astir with the rivalry
+between the giants Michelangelo and Lionardo da Vinci.
+
+The young man must have been fairly bewildered at the multitude of new
+impressions that crowded upon him in the glorious city on the banks of
+the Arno, with its imposing palaces and churches, its seething life and
+its art so much more virile and monumental than the dreamy, almost
+effeminate art engendered by the soft balmy atmosphere of Umbria. How
+he must have revelled in the contemplation of Masaccio's noble frescoes
+in the Brancacci Chapel--the training school of generations of
+painters--which ten years later were echoed in his tapestry cartoons
+for the Sistine Chapel! How he must have stood in wonder and amazement
+before Michelangelo's "David," and have resolved forthwith to devote
+himself to a more intimate study of the human form and movement! The
+fascination exercised upon him by the genius of Lionardo found
+expression in some of the earliest fruits of Raphael's sojourn in
+Florence--the portraits at the Pitti Palace known as "Angelo Doni" and
+his wife Maddalena Strozzi, who, however, could not possibly have been
+the model for this reminiscence of Lionardo's "Mona Lisa," since it is
+known that she was baptized in 1489, whereas Raphael's portrait of 1504
+represents a woman of ripe age.
+
+In the workshop of the architect Baccio d'Agnolo, which was then a
+favourite social resort of the younger artists of Florence, the youth
+from Urbino met on terms of equality such masters as Ridolfo
+Ghirlandajo, Antonio da Sangallo, Sansovino, and Fra Bartolommeo, who
+again had a considerable share in the formation of Raphael's style, as
+may be seen from the "Madonna di Sant'Antonio," now lent to the
+National Gallery by Mr. Pierpont Morgan who is said to have paid for it
+the enormous price of £100,000. This picture, and the "Ansidei
+Madonna," which was bought for the National Gallery from the Duke
+of Marlborough's collection for £70,000, were painted during a visit to
+Perugia towards the end of 1505--the former for the nuns of St. Antony
+of Padua, in Perugia, and the other for the Ansidei Chapel in the
+church of San Fiorenzo of the same city.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE TOWER
+
+(In the National Gallery, London)
+
+This beautiful painting, which the National Gallery owes to the
+generosity of Miss Eva Mackintosh, who presented it to the nation in
+1906, was at one time in the collection of the Duc d'Orléans. The late
+owner was fortunate in securing this unquestionably genuine masterpiece
+at the Rogers' sale in 1856 for 480 guineas. It was painted about 1512;
+and a copy of it by Sassoferrato is in the Leichtenburg collection in
+St. Petersburg.]
+
+The records of Raphael's movements between 1504 and 1508, when he
+finally left Florence, are scanty and unreliable. Certain it is that,
+besides his visit to Perugia, he spent some time at Urbino in 1506,
+when he painted for Guidobaldo the "St. George" which figured among the
+gifts taken by Castiglione to Henry VII. of England, from whom the Duke
+of Urbino had received the insignia of the Garter two years previously.
+The picture is now at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The majority of
+those exquisite Madonna pictures, which have contributed more than
+anything else to Raphael's undying fame and popularity, date from his
+Florentine period--the "Madonna del Granduca" at the Pitti Palace, the
+"Casa Tempi Madonna" at Munich, the Chantilly "Madonna of the House of
+Orleans," the "Madonna of the Meadow" in Vienna, the "Madonna of the
+Goldfinch" at the Uffizi, the "Madonna of the Lamb" at Madrid, Lord
+Cowper's famous picture at Panshanger, and the "Belle Jardinière" at
+the Louvre.
+
+To the same period belongs the portrait of himself, in the Painter's
+Hall of the Uffizi, and the portrait of a youth in the Budapest
+National Gallery. On the occasion of his visit to Perugia, Atalanta
+Baglione, the mother of Grifonetto Baglione who had fallen a victim to
+the bloody family feud that turned Perugia into a slaughter-house in
+1500, commissioned from Raphael an altar-piece in memory of that
+event--the "Entombment" which the master finished in Florence in 1507,
+and which is now at the Borghese Gallery. It was Raphael's first
+attempt at dramatic composition, the art of which he had yet to
+master--its forced, unnatural emotion lays it more open to criticism
+than any other work from his own hand.
+
+A law-case in connection with the payment of 100 crowns due by him for
+a house he had purchased from the Cervasi family, necessitated
+Raphael's presence at Urbino once again in October 1507. In April of
+the following year Guidobaldo died; and a letter from Raphael to his
+uncle Simone Ciarla, who had informed him of this sad event, proves
+that the master was then back again in Florence. After expressing his
+grief at the news of the Duke's death ("I could not read your letter
+without tears"), Raphael appeals in this letter to his uncle to procure
+him another letter of recommendation to the Gonfaloniere of Florence
+"from my Lord the Prefect," since it was in the power of the chief
+magistrate of Florence to place an important commission for the
+decoration of a certain apartment.
+
+But a better fate was in store for the youthful applicant, who was to
+be called to a wider field of action. According to Vasari it was
+Raphael's kinsman, Bramante of Urbino, who drew Pope Julius II.'s
+attention to the rare gifts of Raphael, and caused him to be summoned
+to Rome. And the voice of Bramante, who stood in high favour with the
+Pope, and was engaged on the scheme of rebuilding the Cathedral of St.
+Peter, would certainly have commanded attention. But on this, as on
+many other points, Vasari is not wholly trustworthy. First of all,
+Bramante was not connected with Raphael by any family ties; and, then,
+it is far more probable that the thought of calling Raphael to Rome to
+assist in the decoration of the papal apartments in the Vatican was
+suggested to Julius II. by the Prefetessa Giovanna della Rovere, who
+had always been a staunch supporter of the Urbinate, or by her son
+Francesco, the nephew and successor of Duke Guidobaldo Montefeltre.
+Bramante, who was on terms of friendship with his fellow-artist and
+fellow-townsman, may well have supported the recommendation. However
+this may be, Raphael received the Pope's command, and journeyed to
+Rome, whither he had already been preceded by Michelangelo.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Raphael came to Rome before September 1508, for on the 5th of that
+month he sent a letter from the city of the popes to Francia at
+Bologna, whom he had probably met at Urbino. It must have been an
+intoxicating experience for the young master to find himself suddenly
+surrounded by the wonders of the classic world which at that time
+dominated the whole world of thought so that Christianity itself became
+permeated with Paganism; and to be as suddenly raised from the modest
+position, which in Florence had made him look with awe and veneration
+upon Michelangelo and Lionardo, to independent responsibility, as the
+compeer of the greatest of his calling. From the very first Pope Julius
+II. seems to have placed the utmost confidence in the newcomer, and the
+manner in which Raphael accomplished the first task set to him by his
+mighty patron not only justified this confidence but apparently made
+the Pope dissatisfied with much of the decorative work that had been
+executed in the Vatican rooms before the advent of the Urbinate.
+
+Julius II.'s hatred of his predecessor, Alexander VI., had made it
+distasteful for him to live in the apartments that had been occupied by
+the Borgia Pope, so that he decided, in 1507, to move into the upper
+rooms of the Vatican, which, under the pontificate of Nicholas V., had
+been decorated by Pier dei Franceschi and Bramantino. These frescoes,
+however, did not find favour with the new Pope, who enlisted the
+services of Perugino, Peruzzi, Sodoma, Signorelli, and Pinturicchio for
+the redecoration of the _Stanze_, and finally entrusted Raphael with
+the painting of four medallions in Sodoma's ceiling in the first room,
+the Camera della Signatura. There has been some divergence of opinion
+as to the use of this room, but the subjects of the decorative scheme
+clearly point towards its being originally intended for a library. The
+allegorical figures of Theology, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Poetry
+with which Raphael filled the four medallions of the vaulted ceiling,
+were often used for the decoration of libraries during the late
+Renaissance; and the frequent occurrence of books in all the
+compositions lends further probability to this theory.
+
+So delighted was Julius II. with the manner in which Raphael had
+acquitted himself of his first commission, that he, forthwith, charged
+him with the decoration of the entire suite of four rooms, and
+ruthlessly decreed the destruction of all the fresco-work previously
+done by other hands. But Raphael, in his hour of victory, gave proof of
+that generous and amiable disposition which endeared him to all with
+whom he came in contact. He prevailed upon his impetuous employer to
+save some of the work of Baldassare Peruzzi and of Perugino, and
+Sodoma's ceiling decoration in the Camera della Signatura. A series of
+heads by Bramantino, "so beautiful and so perfectly executed, that the
+power of speech alone was required to give them life," had to go, but
+before their destruction Raphael had them copied by one of his
+assistants. After his death these copies were presented by Giulio
+Romano to Paolo Giovio, and it is more than probable that they are
+identical with the "Bramantino" portraits from the Willett collection,
+now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and at South Kensington. Sir
+Caspar Pardon Clarke, the director of the former institution, at least
+favours this theory which I first advanced in the _New York Herald_ in
+1905.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--POPE JULIUS II.
+
+(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
+
+Raphael's greatness as a portrait painter may be judged from his
+painting of his first papal patron, the warlike Giuliano della Rovere,
+who as Pope adopted the name of Julius II. This portrait has more than
+the perfection of form, colour, and execution that is ever associated
+with Raphael's name. It has depth of character, dignity, and serious
+concentration of thought, and is worthy of being placed beside
+Velazquez's immortal portrait of Pope Innocent X. The picture is at the
+Uffizi Gallery, but replicas are to be found at the Palazzo Pitti and
+at the National Gallery.]
+
+But to return to Raphael's work in the Camera della Signatura, the
+thought and knowledge and learning displayed in the whole scheme either
+prove that the young master rapidly fell into line with the
+intellectual movement of his day, or that he wisely sought the advice
+of those who stood at the head of this movement. Indeed, we know of a
+letter in which he asks the poet Ariosto to advise him about certain
+details. Moreover, the Pope himself, no doubt, suggested his own ideas
+to his favourite painter; whilst the cultured Cardinal Bibbiena, Count
+Baldassare Castiglione, and the famous humanist Pietro Bembo, his
+intimate friends, were ever at his disposal, and Bramante probably
+assisted him in designing the architectural setting to his groups.
+Raphael himself, though extraordinarily receptive, and better able than
+anybody else to clothe an idea in the most perfect pictorial forms, was
+not a man of learning. With Dante's and Petrarch's poetry he must have
+been made familiar in his father's house. He had probably dipped into
+the writings of Marsilio Ficino, and also acquired a knowledge of the
+rudiments of classic lore; but that he never mastered the Latin tongue,
+which was then a _sine quâ non_ of all real culture and learning, is
+clearly evident from the fact that in the closing years of his life,
+when he held the appointment of inspector of antiquities, he had to
+enlist the learned humanist Andrea Fulvio to translate for him the
+Latin inscriptions on classic ruins.
+
+In the Camera della Signatura, Raphael's entire decoration has the same
+sense of orderly arrangement, the same unity of conception in the
+endless variety of _motif_ and incident, as each individual fresco of
+the scheme. On the pendentives, which connect the ceiling medallions
+with the large frescoes on the walls, he painted the "Fall of Man" next
+to "Theology," the "Judgment of Solomon" next to "Law," the "Triumph of
+Apollo over Marsyas" to accompany "Poetry," and an allegorical
+representation of "Astronomy" (or "Natural Science") to go with
+"Philosophy." After an enormous amount of preparatory work he proceeded
+to fill the large wall under "Theology" with the wonderful monumental
+fresco known as the "Disputa del Sacramento," which, far from
+representing a dispute, shows the confessors and saints and fathers of
+the Church (and among them Dante, Savonarola, and Fra Angelico) united
+in acknowledging the triumph of the Church and the miracle of the
+Eucharist.
+
+On the opposite wall, under "Philosophy," is the so-called "School of
+Athens," in which, in accordance with the contradictory spirit of the
+age, the philosophic systems of the ancient world are glorified in the
+same manner as is Christianity in the "Disputa." In that nobly-arranged
+group of philosophers, Raphael's friends and contemporaries--Bramante,
+Lionardo, Castiglione, Francesco della Rovere, Federigo Gonzaga,
+Sodoma, the artist himself, and many others--figure in the guise of
+Euclid, Plato, Zoroaster, and other sages. Raphael's compositional
+skill was not baffled by the awkward intrusion of large door-frames
+into the space of the remaining two walls, on one of which, under the
+Poetry medallion, he depicted "Parnassus," with the muses and poets
+(Homer, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto, Boccaccio, Tebaldeo, Sappho, &c.)
+grouped around Apollo, who plays a viol instead of the customary lyre.
+Above the door on the last wall are allegorical figures of Fortitude,
+Prudence, and Temperance, and at the sides "Justinian delivering the
+Pandects," and "Gregory IX." (impersonated by Julius II.) promulgating
+the Decretals. The entire room was finished before November 1511.
+
+It was probably in the same year that Raphael painted the magnificent
+portrait of Julius II. at the Pitti Palace, stern of feature and
+careworn, as he well might have appeared at this time of political
+disaster culminating in the loss of Bologna. But when Raphael set about
+the decoration of the "Stanza of Heliodorus," the Pope's star was again
+in the ascendant, and his policy had achieved the signal triumph of
+defeating the French and driving them out of the country. The subjects
+chosen for the decoration of this room are in consequence more or less
+directly connected with these events, especially the fresco from which
+the apartment derives its name: the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the
+Temple of Jerusalem"--an obvious allusion to the expulsion of the
+French forces. The fresco is remarkable for the effective contrast of
+the tumultuous dramatic movement on the right, and the stately repose
+of the group on the left, around the majestically enthroned figure of
+Pope Julius II.
+
+The same potentate of the Church appears kneeling opposite the
+officiating priest in the fresco of the "Mass of Bolsena," which
+illustrates the miracle of drops of blood appearing from the Host
+before the eyes of the priest who doubts the dogma of the
+transubstantiation, an event which has led to the institution of the
+Corpus Christi celebration. The fresco was probably inspired by Julius
+himself, who had visited the chapel of Bolsena on his campaign against
+Bologna, and perhaps made a vow on this occasion to commemorate his
+visit by a votive offering. This "Mass of Bolsena" fresco is remarkable
+for the almost Venetian glow of warm colour, a result, no doubt, of the
+knowledge imparted to Raphael by Sebastiano del Piombo, who had come to
+Rome from Venice in 1511. The wall opposite illustrates the "Liberation
+of St. Peter from Prison," which is, however, not an allusion, as has
+been suggested, to Leo X.'s escape from French captivity, since it was
+begun under the régime of Julius II., who more probably intended it to
+signify the Deliverance of the Church. On the last wall is depicted the
+"Retreat of Attila before St. Leo," with Leo X., who had succeeded
+Julius II. in 1513, impersonating his namesake, but there is little of
+Raphael's handiwork in this fresco, the execution of which is almost
+entirely due to his assistants. The decoration of this stanza was
+completed in 1514, a year which brought further honours and duties to
+Raphael who was then appointed to succeed Bramante as architect of St.
+Peter's.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PUTTO WITH GARLAND
+
+(In the Academy of St. Luca, Rome)
+
+The fresco of a _putto_, now at the Academy of St. Luca in Rome, is the
+only fragment that is left to the world of all the decorative work
+executed by Raphael for the corridor leading from the famous _Stanze_
+of the Vatican to the Belvedere. It probably belonged to a shield
+bearing the papal arms, and is a graceful and characteristic example of
+the master's treatment of the form of children which he loved to
+introduce into his compositions.]
+
+Henceforth Raphael is to be considered rather as the head of a little
+army of painters and craftsmen, whom he supplied with ideas and designs
+to be executed under his directions, than as a master who is to be held
+responsible for the working out of every detail in the works which were
+turned out from his bottega with his sanction, and under his name. Even
+in the early years of his Roman period, comparatively few of the
+altar-pieces and easel pictures commissioned from him were entirely the
+work of his brush. In the ever popular "Madonna della Sedia," at the
+Pitti Palace, we have pure Raphael, and also in the masterpiece known
+as the "Madonna di Foligno," which was painted for the Pope's
+Chamberlain Sigismondi dei Conti, for his family chapel in the church
+of Ara Coeli in 1512, in commemoration of this dignitary's escape from
+a bursting fireball, as is indicated by the meteor in the landscape
+background. This picture was subsequently removed to Sigismondo's
+birthplace Foligno, whence it was carried off by the French in 1797,
+but had to be eventually restored, and is now among the treasures of
+the Vatican. The sadly deteriorated "Madonna of the Tower," at the
+National Gallery, and the "Madonna di Casa d'Alba," at the Hermitage,
+are probably of the master's own execution; but Giulio Romano and other
+pupils must be held responsible for the "Vierge au Diadème," the
+"Madonna del divino Amore," the "Garvagh Madonna," the "Madonna of the
+Fish," the "Madonna of the Candelabra," and several other well-known
+pictures for which Raphael had supplied the designs.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+A letter written by Raphael to his uncle Simone Ciarla on the 1st of
+July 1514 is of incalculable importance for the light it throws upon
+the master's private life and character. It is written by a man flushed
+with success, but modest withal--in the full enjoyment of all the gifts
+that fortune and his talent and tact have brought to him, but in no way
+overbearing or boastful. And through it all sounds a note of cool
+calculation--in money matters as well as in the weighing of matrimonial
+chances. He states the amount of his fortune, of his salary as
+architect of St. Peter's, and of the payments that are to be made to
+him for "work in hand." And in the same way he refers to an
+"advantageous match" proposed to him by Cardinal Bibbiani, to which he
+has already pledged himself, but should it fall to the ground, "I will
+fall in with your wishes"--a reference apparently to an eligible
+matrimonial candidate in Urbino. Nor are there chances lacking in Rome,
+where, indeed, he knows of a pretty girl with a dowry of 3000 gold
+crowns! He also mentions with no little pride that he is living in Rome
+in his own house.
+
+These remarks about his matrimonial schemes take us to one of the most
+interesting and most disputed chapters of Raphael's life--his irregular
+attachment to the "Bella Fornarina," the beautiful daughter of a baker
+from Siena, which is referred to first by Vasari, and then, in 1665, by
+Fabio Chigi, and has been treated as mere invention by many modern
+writers. The evidence collected by Signor Rodolfo Lanciani proves,
+however, the truth of Vasari's story, and furthermore establishes the
+name and ultimate fate of the "Fornarina." According to local
+tradition, three houses in Rome are pointed out as the successive
+homes of Raphael's _inamorata_; and each of these houses is in close
+proximity to the buildings, on the decoration of which the master was
+successively employed. The first of these houses in the Via di Sta.
+Dorotea is still occupied by a bakery known as "il forno della
+Fornarina;" the second is in the Vicolo del Cedro near St. Egidio in
+Trastevere; and the third is the Palazzetto Sassi, which has a tablet
+let into the wall with an inscription to the effect that "Tradition
+says that the one who became so dear to Raphael, and whom he raised to
+fame, lived in this house."
+
+It has now been ascertained from a census return made under Leo X. in
+1518, that one of the houses of the Sassi family was occupied by the
+baker Francesco from Siena, which completely tallies with the tradition
+that "Margherita, donna di Raffaello," as she is described in a
+contemporary marginal note in a copy of the Giunta edition of Vasari
+in 1568, was the daughter of a baker from Siena. But even more decisive
+is the proof which was found in 1897 in an entry in the ledger of the
+Congregation of Sant'Apollonia in Trastevere, a kind of home for fallen
+and repentant women. This entry, which is under the date of the 18th
+August 1520, that is a little over four months after Raphael's death,
+runs as follows: "A di 18 Augusti 1520 Hoggi e stata recenta nel nostro
+Conservatorio ma^a Margarita vedoa, figliola del quondam Francescho
+Luti da Siena." ("August 18, 1520.--To-day has been received into our
+establishment the widow _Margarita, daughter of the late Francesco Luti
+of Siena_.") The remarkable coincidence of dates and names leaves no
+doubt that this "widow" was the Bella Fornarina, Margherita, the
+daughter of the baker Francesco from Siena, and the beautiful creature
+who served Raphael as model for the "Donna Velata," for the "Sistine
+Madonna," and for one of the heads in the "St. Cecilia."
+
+The story goes that Raphael's attachment lasted up to the time of his
+death, when, on the insistence of the Pope's messenger who was to bring
+the dying man the benediction, she was removed from the room. Vasari
+also relates that in his will Raphael "left her a sufficient provision
+wherewith she might live in decency." His long infatuation with the
+baker's daughter may well account for his unwillingness to enter into
+the bonds of matrimony even with as desirable and noble a partner as
+Cardinal Bernardo Divizio's niece, Maria Bibbiena, to whom he was
+practically engaged in 1514, and who after years of postponement is
+said to have died of a broken heart. Vasari's statement that Raphael's
+hesitation was due to the prospect of a cardinal's hat being bestowed
+upon him is utterly untrustworthy and contrary to all precedent and
+reason. It is much more likely that Raphael considered it diplomatic to
+humour a man in as powerful a position as Cardinal Bibbiena, and to
+agree to become engaged to his niece, even though his own position at
+the time was such that he could speak on terms of equality to
+cardinals, as may be gathered from this witty repartee recorded by his
+friend Baldassare Castiglione: Two cardinals, who examined a painting
+upon which he was just engaged, found fault with the redness of the
+complexion of St. Peter and St. Paul. "My Lords," retorted Raphael, "be
+not concerned; because I painted them so with full intention, since we
+have reason to believe that St. Peter and St. Paul are as red in Heaven
+as you see them here, for shame that their Church should be governed by
+such as you!"
+
+But we must return to Raphael's work in the last decade of his life.
+He could now no longer devote himself entirely to the art of his
+choice, and found it utterly impossible to cope with the multitude of
+commissions that were showered upon him by the mighty of this earth,
+even though a swarm of assistants were constantly kept at work. The
+vain appeals of Isabella d'Este for a small painting from his hand
+prove the difficulty of obtaining such a favour. For Raphael was now
+the Pope's architect and superintendent of ceremonies, and in 1515 he
+was appointed inspector of antiquities in succession to Fra Giocondo of
+Verona. He had to paint scenery and to design medals and plans; and on
+one occasion he was actually called upon to paint a life-size elephant
+on the walls of the Vatican!
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--PORTRAIT OF RAPHAEL
+
+(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
+
+Though much "restored" and over-painted--and not by the most competent
+hands--the portrait of Raphael in the _Sala dei Pittori_ at the Uffizi,
+the Walhalla of pictorial fame, is undoubtedly painted by the master
+himself, at the age of about twenty-three, when his features had lost
+none of the almost girlish charm and delicacy of which we are told by
+contemporary writers. In time the portrait stands midway between
+Timoteo Viti's charming drawing of his "apprentice," the boy Raphael,
+at the Oxford University Galleries, and Sebastiano del Piombo's
+portrait of the "Prince of Painters" at the Buda-Pesth Museum.]
+
+Yet, with all these absorbing occupations he found time to model
+several reliefs for the Chigi tomb in the Chigi Chapel of St. Maria
+del Popolo, notably a panel of classic design representing "Christ and
+the Woman of Samaria," which was cast in bronze by Lorenzotto, who also
+executed in marble a statue of Jonah from a model by Raphael. He
+furnished the architectural designs of the Villa Madama for Giulio dei
+Medici (afterwards Clement VII.) and several other palaces in Rome, and
+also for the dainty Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence, where the
+alternating arched and triangular pediments are for the first time
+introduced in secular Renaissance architecture. He furnished the
+engraver Marcantonio Raimondi of Bologna with designs like the famous
+"Judgment of Paris." He planned and began an elaborate Cosmography of
+Rome; and yet in the midst of all his varied labours he found leisure
+to scribble some ardent love sonnets on his sheets of drawings. An
+example of his poetic effusions is preserved at the British Museum,
+and its ardent tone lends colour to Vasari's assertion that Raphael was
+extremely susceptible to the charms of the fair sex. The palace in
+which he lived in princely state was built by Bramante and bought by
+Raphael on October 7, 1517. In very much altered form it still stands
+in the Piazza di Scossacavalli at the corner of the Via di Borgo Nuovo.
+Since the present building has been identified as Raphael's palace, his
+studio has been discovered, cut into two apartments, but with a
+beautiful wooden ceiling by Bramante left intact.
+
+In this studio he must have painted the greatest and most deservedly
+popular of his altar-pieces, the "Madonna di San Sisto," and the
+"Transfiguration," now at the Vatican Gallery, which was on his easel
+when death stayed his hand. Here, too, he probably painted that
+masterly portrait of "Baldassare Castiglione," which is one of the
+priceless treasures of the Louvre, and perhaps the magnificent group of
+"Leo X. with Cardinals Giulio dei Medici and L. dei Rossi," now at the
+Pitti Palace. All the most notable men who were in Rome at that period
+passed through Raphael's studio, but of the portraits which he is known
+to have painted in Rome, comparatively few have come down to us. That
+of the humanist Tommaso Inghirami was until recently at the Inghirami
+Palace in Volterra, but has now gone across the Atlantic; one of
+Cardinal Bibbiena is in Madrid; and one of the Venetian humanists
+Navagero and Beazzano in the Doria Palace in Rome. Among the lost
+portraits are those of Pietro Bembo, of Giuliano dei Medici, Duke of
+Nemours, of Federigo Gonzaga, and of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino.
+
+Meanwhile Raphael's pupils had been busy with the decoration of the
+remaining two _Stanze_ of the Vatican after Raphael's designs. In the
+Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo, which was decorated for Leo. X. between
+1514-1517, Giulio Romano had painted the "Battle of Ostia" and most of
+the "Incendio del Borgo," though parts of the latter, which illustrates
+the staying of the great conflagration by Leo IV.'s prayer, are
+unquestionably Raphael's own. The last room, called the Hall of
+Constantine, was almost entirely painted after the master's death by
+his pupils, who also had the chief share in the execution of the
+fifty-two scriptural subjects in the Loggia of the Vatican, which are
+known as "The Bible of Raphael." Most of this work was done by Perino
+del Vaga, while Giovanni da Udine added the arabesques and grotesques
+round the panels. But all this has suffered much from exposure to the
+elements, and has been entirely repainted.
+
+For Agostino Chigi's Villa Farnesina, Raphael painted the beautiful
+"Galatea" fresco, which may be considered the supreme expression of the
+spirit of the Renaissance. This merchant prince gave the master another
+opportunity for displaying his decorative skill, when he employed him
+in adorning the Chigi Chapel in St. Maria della Pace. The Sibyls and
+Angels of these frescoes afford the most striking instance of
+Michelangelo's influence upon Raphael; and it is a curious coincidence
+that it was just in reference to this work that Michelangelo was called
+upon to express his opinion as to the fairness of Raphael's charge of
+500 ducats. That small jealousy was not one of Buonarroti's faults
+appears from the generous valuation of 900 ducats he put upon his
+rival's work.
+
+In 1515-1516 Raphael designed the cartoons for the tapestries which
+were to complete the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. The cartoons
+were translated into the material by the looms of Flanders at a cost
+of 34,000 scudi; and these tapestries are now, after many wanderings,
+and after having suffered much dilapidation, housed on the upper floor
+of the Vatican. Seven of the cartoons, cut into strips for the
+exigencies of the loom, were discovered in Flanders by Rubens, and
+purchased on his advice by Charles I. in 1630. On the breaking up of
+the ill-fated king's collection, they were saved from transportation by
+Oliver Cromwell and are now at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The
+execution of these cartoons is almost entirely due to Gian Francesco
+Penni, and the borders of the tapestries were designed by Giovanni da
+Usline. About 1516 Raphael also decorated Cardinal Bibbiena's bathroom
+with the "Triumphs of Venus and Cupid," in Pompeian style. The frescoes
+are still in existence, but are not accessible to the public.
+
+In the early days of April 1520 Raphael was attacked by a fever which
+he had probably contracted in superintending some excavations. He made
+his last will on the 4th of April and died on the 6th. That he repented
+of his treatment of Maria Bibbiena is fairly evident from the epitaph
+which, by his wish, was placed upon her tomb: "We, Baldassare Turini da
+Pescia and Gianbattista Branconi dall'Aquila, testamentary executors
+and recipients of the last wishes of Raphael, have raised this memorial
+to his affianced wife, Maria, daughter of Antonio da Bibbiena, whom
+death deprived of a happy marriage." After providing for the Fornarina,
+so that she might "live in decency," he left his fortune of 16,000
+ducats to his relatives, and his drawings and sketches to his favourite
+pupils Giulio Romano and Penni. He was buried in the Pantheon in close
+proximity to Maria Bibbiena. His epitaph was written by Cardinal Bembo,
+and Count Baldassare Castiglione also put his grief into the shape of
+a beautiful sonnet.
+
+"The death of Raphael," says Vasari, "was bitterly deplored by all the
+Papal court, not only because he had formed part thereof, since he had
+held the office of chamberlain to the Pontiff, but also because Leo X.
+had esteemed him so highly, that his loss occasioned that sovereign the
+bitterest grief. Oh, most happy and thrice blessed spirit, of whom all
+are proud to speak, whose actions are celebrated with praise by all
+men, and the least of whose works left behind thee is admired and
+prized."
+
+
+The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London
+
+The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Italics is represented with underscore _ and small caps with ALL CAPS.
+Illustrations were moved to paragraph breaks, one missing opening
+quotation mark was added and ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines
+were retained. The abbreviation "nro" has been expanded to "nostro",
+the caret character ^ used to represent superscripted letters.
+Everything else has been retained as printed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Raphael, by Paul G. Konody
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44033 ***