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'u,r ^5.-'/’' - ' V ; u ft • I. •t^ L i^' f / i 4lS .-ait */■^^V.••.f THE PORTFOLIO MONOGRAPHS ON ARTISTIC SUBJECTS WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS PUBLISHED MONTHLY No. 13 January., 1895 The Early Work of Raphael by JULIA CARTWRIGHT {Mrs. Henry Ady") London; SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, ESSEX STREET, STRAND Sold by Hatchard, 187 Piccadilly Paris: Librairie Galignani, 224 Rue de Rivoli. Berlin : A. Asher & Co., 13 Unter den Linden New York : Macmillan & Co. Price Half-a-Crown THE PORTFOLIO. JAPANESE OBJECTS OF ART (ANCIENT). LACQUERS, ART BRONZES, POTTERY, NETSAKES, TSUBAS, METAL WORKS, COLOUR PRINTS BY KORIUSAI, UTAMARO, SHUNSHO, IstTOYOKUNE, YESHI, TORIYE HOKUSAI, &c., CHOICE EMBROIDERIES, BROCADES, and other ART WORKS OF OLD JAPAN. KTII^’ETEEN’ (Bolt), Silver, ant) Bron3e fIDebal Clxicago dxh.i'bi'tio]:! HIGHEST AWARDS (WALL-PAPER S & EMBOSSED LEATHER, P WOOLLAMS & GO. OlilGIKAL MAKERS OF ARTISTIC PAPER ■ HANGINGS, FREE FROM ARSENIC. Sole Address:— 110 HIGH STREET, {Hear Manchester Square')^ OF ALL DECORATORS. LONOON, W. S. EIDA, IMPORTER, PICCADILLY CIRCUS CHAMBERS, Entrance, 217 Piccadilhf, W. ThomasMoring ENGRAVER. BOOK-PLATES BRASS DOOR-PLATES The AUTOTYPE FINE-ART GALLER 74, NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON, Is remarkable for its Display of Copies of Celebrated Works • THE GREAT MASTERS, From the principal European Collections, including many of the fine works of RAP H AE L, Amongst which the following are worthy of attention : — Rome. Uffizi. Uffizi. PiTTI. 'The Madonna del ' dellino. The Madonna del ( Duca. The Vision of Ezekie The Madonna dellaS’ St. Petersburg. La Vierge Maisond’AIbe. The Vatican frescoes. The Madonnadi Foligno. Dresden. The Madonna di San Sisto. Louvre. La Belle Jardiniere. La Vierge au Voile. Balthazar Castiglione. J oan of Aragon . His own portrait. etc., etc., etc. Drawings from the Collections at Vienna, Milan. Paris, Florence, & Loi A LARGE COLLECTION of EXAMPLES of MODERN FRET and ENGLISH ART in SELECTED FRAMES, suitable for H. LIBRARY, DRAWING-ROOM, BOUDOIR, &c. THE AUTOTYPE FINE-ART CATALOGUE 184 pages, with Illustrated Supplement, containing 63 Miniature I graphs of notable Autotypes, post free, One Shilling. Autotype: a Decorative and Educational Art. Application. New Pamphlet — Fr THE AUTOTYPE COMPANY, LONDC MEDALS ARMORIAL PAINTING ILLUMINATING DIE SINKING VISITING CARDS STATIONERY 52 HIGH HOLBORN LONDON, W.C. Established 1791. A Catalogue dealing with Seal Engraxikg, Seals, Rings, Stones, iAc., and containing Notes on the History of Seals, printed on hand-made paper and illustrated hy Autotype Reproductions. Post free, 1 3 stamps. Illustfatiofis of AlE/ilO R Ij't L. HRrtSRESpos! J> cc oti iiJ>pl}ctaion. Venetian glass FOR WEDDING PRESENTS FOR TABLE (£ GENERAL USE A Choice Collection at Moderate Prices nifl always be seen at the Gallery of the VENICE &MURAN0 GLASS CO 30 ST. JAMES’S STREET, S.W. ^Jhc C llai^rnna Sj randiica'. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES PAGE Madonna del Granduca. Pitti Gallery, Florence Frontispiece. St. Sebastian. Bergamo Gallery to face 28 The Marriage of the Virgin. Brera Gallery, Milan 3 + Portrait of Raphael. Uffizi Gallery, Florence 5 ^ ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Portrait of Timoteo Viti. By himself. British Museum 13 The Vision of a Knight. By Raphael. National Gallery 13 St. Michael. By Raphael. In the Louvre .... 17 The Crucifixion. By Raphael. In the possession of L. Mond, Esq 21 Head of an Angel. Study for the Coronation of the Virgin. By Raphael. British Museum 24 The Conestabile Madonna. By Raphael. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. From a photograph by Braun, Cle'ment ct Cie, by permission 29 Portrait of Perugino. By Raphael. In the Borghesc Gallery, Rome. From a photograph by D. Anderson, by permission 31 St. George. By Raphael. In the Louvre 33 Study of a Woman. By Timoteo Viti. In the Malcolm Collection 37 Madonna. From a drawing by Raphael. In the Malcolm Collection 39 Group in the Venice Sketch-book, from Lionardo’s “ Battle of the Standard ” . . 43 Angelo Uoni. By Raphael. Pitti Gallery, Florence. From a photograph by Braun, Clement ct Cie, by permission 45 4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Maddalcna Doni. By Raphael. Pitti Gallery, Florence. From a photograph by Alinari, by permission The Casa Tempi Madonna. By Raphael. Old Pinacothek, Munich. From a photograph by Hanfstangl and Co., by permission 51 The Ansidei Madonna. By Raphael. From the picture in the National Gallery 55 St. George and the Dragon. From a drawing by Raphael in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence 59 The Madonna del Prato. By Raphael. Belvedere Gallery, Vienna 61 'Fhe Madonna del Cardcllino. By Raphael. Pitti Gallery, Florence. From a photograph by Alinari, by permission 63 La Belle Jardiniere. B}' Raphael. In the Louvre. From a photograph by Braun, Clement ct Cie, by permission 65 Sketch of the Entombment. By Raphael. Flabich Collection 69 The F'.ntombmcnt. By Raphael. Borghese Gallery, Rome. F'rom a photograph by Alinari, by permission 71 St. Catherine. Bv Raphael. From the picture in the National Gallery .... 75 St. Apollonia. By Raphael. Habich Collection 77 THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL PART I UR B I NO 1483—1500 Birf^ mid family of Raphael — Giova?ini Santi as a painter and a poet — His relations with the Court of Urbino- — Early training of Raphael — Timoteo Viti his first master — His earliest pictures — St. Michael — Vision of a Knight — The Three Graces — His character and genius. Among the many services which the late Senatore Morelli rendered to the cause of art, none is more important than the new light which he has thrown on the life and work of Raphael. His keen and accurate eye, his patient researches, have done more to place the study of the great Urbinate’s art upon a scientific footing than the whole mass of literature which, in former years, had gathered round his name. Many old tradi- tions have been upset, more than one favourite conviction of the popular mind has been destroyed, in the process. The fables which had grown up round the painter’s childhood and the story of his loves have been blown to the winds. A few celebrated pictures and a vast number of drawings which had been indiscriminately assigned to his hand have been restored to their true authors. But it cannot be said that Raphael’s fame has suffered loss. On the contrary, his genius only shines with a purer and serener lustre. Now for the first time we realise the rare excellence and supreme beauty of his art. Now, better than ever before, we can 6 rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL follow him through the successive stages of his development. Step by step we can measure the growth of his powers and note the marvellous facility with which he received and assimilated each fresh impression. We can lay our finger on the varied sources from which he drew his inspiration, and see how line by line, form by form, his creations derived their birth from one master after another, until all that was best in the art of Ferrara, of Umbria, and of Florence became gradually absorbed into his art. Much more, no doubt, remains to be done. Our knowledge of the actual fiicts of Raphael’s early years is still vague and fragmentary, and too often lacks the support of historic evidence. But the main lines which future investigation will take have been laid down, and all systematic study of Raphael’s work will be henceforth based upon Morelli’s conclusions. I'oremost among the kindly influences which fostered the develop- ment of Raphael’s art were the time and place of his birth. For once at least in the world’s story the child of genius saw the light under the most fortunate conditions. Urbino, where he was born in the full noontide of the Italian Renaissance, was famous not only for its pure air and lovely situation, but for the virtue and wisdom of the Montefeltro princes. Under the paternal rule of the good Duke Federigo, this narrow strip of land between Umbria and the Marches had become the seat of an ideal Court, upon which the eyes of all Europe were fixed. Here, on the rugged heights of the Apennines, overlooking the distant Adriatic, the Illyrian architect Luzio di Lauranna had reared that palace which was to become one of the wonders of Italy — “ a palace,” writes that accomplished gentleman Castiglione, “ so richly furnished with all things needful that it appeared rather a city than a palace. For he adorned it not only with silver plate and splendid hangings of gold and silk brocade, but with an infinite number of anticjue statues of marble and bronze and precious pictures and musical instruments of all kinds, neither would he add anything but what was most rare and excellent. Above all, he collected a large number of rare and excellent books, Greek, Latin, and Flebrew, which he ornamented with gold and silver, and counted the most costly treasure of his great palace.” Here the good Duke, himself as ardent a student as he was brave as a warrior, loved to collect noble youths and men of learning about him, and with them devote his leisure THE EARLl^ WORK OF RAPHAEL 7 hours to knightly exercises and Latin studies. Often, too, he would descend into the narrow streets at the foot of the castle hill and walk freely up and down among his subjects, entering their workshops and talking with the peasants on market days, and so beloved was he by all, that the people fell on their knees and cried “God keep you !” as he passed. At this model court Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, held a dis- tinguished position, both as a painter and a poet. Originally natives of Colbordolo, a village in the hills above the valley of the Foglia, the Santi saw their homes laid waste by an inroad of Sigismondo Malatesta in 1446. Four years later, fearing a second incursion of the enemy, they took shelter within the walls of Urbino. Here they carried on their trade as corn and oil dealers, and, in 1464, bought a house in one of the steep streets at the corner of the market-place, known at that time as the Contrada del Monte, to-day as the Contrada Raffaello. Giovanni, who was born before 1440, recalls the perils of his youth and the flames that consumed the paternal nest in his verses, and sighs over the ceaseless round of domestic cares, “ of all the ills that flesh is heir to, the most wearisome,” but which nevertheless have not hindered him from em- bracing the splendid art of painting — “ la mirabile e clarissima arte di pittura," of which noble calling he does not blush to call himself the servant. Yet he seems to have been a fortunate and prosperous man. When he was about forty, he married Magia Ciarla, the daughter of an Urbino tradesman, who brought him a dowry of 150 florins, and at the death of his father, in 1485, inherited the chief part of his property in land and houses. By this time he was an artist of considerable reputation, although he still plied his trade in corn and ropes and oil, and carved images and gilded candelabra, as well as painted altar-pieces for the churches of Urbino. Magia Ciarla bore her husband three children, two of whom died in their intancy. The only surviving one, Raphael, was born on Good Friday, the 28th of March 1483. His father gave him the name of the archangel who was reverenced as the special protector of the young, and Magia nursed the boy herself, by the express wish of her husband, who feared that he might not thrive under the roof of hired peasants. A faded painting of the Madonna and Child in the courtyard of the house 8 rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL where he was born is said to represent the artist’s wife and child, while according to another old tradition, Raphael appears as a boy-angel with curly locks and brown eyes in his father’s wall-painting in the Dominican church at Cagli. This altar-piece of the Virgin and Saints, with a lunette of the Resurrection above, and another Madonna at the convent of Monte- fiorentlno, near Castel Durante, are among the best of many works with which Giovanni Santi adorned the churches in the neighbourhood of Urbino, during the last ten years of his life. These are for the most part painted in the conventional Umbrian manner, and cannot be said to give us any high idea of his powers. The same faces and types are repeated with little variety, the draperies are stiff, the attitudes constrained, but the execution Is careful and conscientious throughout, and the architectural backgrounds and foreshortened figures show that he had profited by the teaching of the more distinguished artists who had visited Urbino. Paolo Uccello came there in 1468, and a year afterwards, Giovanni Santi himself received Piero della Francesca under his roof, when he came to paint an altar-piece for the confraternity of Corpus Christi, while he speaks of Melozzo da Forli as a dear and intimate friend. But if the father of Raphael never rose above the rank of a second-class artist, he was a man of considerable mental attainments, and his influence as a scholar and poet had probably a greater effect upon his son’s future than his actual achievements in art. It was these gifts which endeared him to Duke Federigo, whose death in 1482 he lamented with such heartfelt grief, and which won for him the favour of his youthful son and successor, Guido- baldo. In a letter of the lOth of May 1483, Antonio Braccaleone, the young Duke’s doctor, mentions a portrait of himself which has been lately finished by the Duke’s painter, who “ is also a disciple of the Muses” — a description which, as M. Miintz has already remarked, plainly applies to Giovanni Santi. In this capacity he probably accompanied Guidobaldo when, in i486, he went to Mantua to visit his destined bride, Elizabeth Gonzaga, and there saw Messer Andrea at work on his famous Y riumphs. When, two years afterwards, the Duke’s marriage was cele- brated with great pomp at Urbino, it was Giovanni Santi who composed the dramatic poem introducing all the gods and goddesses of Olympus to welcome the royal bride, which the young Duchess describes, in her letters to Mantua, as the most splendid part of her reception. rHE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 9 It was doubtless in honour of this occasion that Giovanni wrote and dedicated to Guidobaldo his famous poem, consisting of 23,000 verses in ferza rima, and now preserved in the Vatican Library. The long chapters which recount the warlike deeds of Duke Federigo and the well-known passage on living painters have been often quoted, but in some ways the most interesting part of the poem is the pre- lude. There, in strains of tender melancholy that recall Chaucer’s verse, the poet tells us how one autumn day, when the leaves were growing pale and the flowers had vanished from meadow and hillside, he lay down in the shade of a spreading beech, and, musing sadly over the sense of human failure, fell asleep, and was led in a trance by Plutarch through the halls of the Gods and the temple of Mars. There he heard the fatal news of Duke Federigo’s death, and, waking from his dream, resolved to sing the praise of the dead hero. The whole poem is plainly written in imitation of the Divina Commedia, and shows Raphael’s father to have been a man of wide culture, who shared the humanists’ love of antiquity, and was familiar with every phase of contemporary art. Fie does not forget good King Rene or mighty John of Bruges, and enumerates the painters and sculptors of Florence from Fra Angelico and Masaccio to Ghirlandajo and Dona- tello. He speaks of Lionardo and Perugino as two youths equal in their age and affection for one another, dwells with delight on the art of Desider, “ si dolce e hello” and has a word of praise for the Venetian masters. But, above all, he extols Andrea Mantegna as foremost among living artists, a compliment which would not fail to be appreciated by the young Duchess, but which was also the fruit of his own genuine admiration of the great Mantuan’s art. The influence of Mantegna certainly makes itself felt in Giovanni’s later works, especially in the portraits of donors which he introduces in his altar- piece at Montefiorentino and in another which he painted about this time in the Cathedral of Urbino, for the Buffi, a family intimately connected with his wife’s relations. His portraits, we learn from a letter of Isabella d’Este, were in great repute, and he himself was highly esteemed by her sister-in-law, the young Duchess Elizabeth. But in the midst of this prosperous career, family troubles came to darken Giovanni’s home. In October 1491, he lost both his wife and lO rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL mother within a few days, and his infant daughter soon followed them to the grave. Six months later he married a young girl named Bernardina di Parte, the daughter of an Urbino goldsmith, who brought him a dowry of 200 florins. In the summer of 1493, the Duchess paid a long visit to her sister-in-law, Isabella d’Este, and when at Christmas the Duke went to Mantua to bring her back, he took Giovanni Santi with him, to paint the portraits of the Gonzaga family. By the 13th of January 1494, he had finished that of Isabella d’Este, which she sent to a friend, with the remark that the likeness did not satisfy her, although it was the work of Giovanni Santi, the Duchess of Urbino’s painter, who was renowned for his skill in portraiture. He proceeded to take portraits of her husband the Marquis Gianfrancesco and of his brother. Bishop Eodovico, but before he had completed these, he fell ill of fever and returned home. There he lingered on for several months, growing weaker every day, and finding himself unable to complete the portraits which he had begun, or to paint that of the Duchess, which was impatiently awaited at Mantua. On the ist of August he died, and on the 19th Elizabeth wrote to her sister-in-law : “About twenty days ago Giovanni de’ Sancti, the painter, passed out of this life. He was con- scious to the last, and died in an excellent state of mind. May God pardon and receive his soul ! ” A few days before his death Giovanni had made a will, leaving the bulk of his property, valued at 860 florins, to be equally divided between his brother, a priest, by name Don Bartolommeo, and his young son Raphael, and giving his widow her dowry and clothes, together with the right of living in the family house. Soon after her husband’s death Bernardina gave birth to a daughter, who was entitled under her father’s will to a portion of 150 florins. But Don Bartolommeo, who had been appointed guardian to his nephew, soon quarrelled with his widowed sister-in-law, and refused to pay for his niece’s maintenance. In 1495, and again in 1497, the case came before the courts of law, and each time the priest was condemned with costs. Still Don Bartolommeo remained obdurate, until, in June 1499, the case again came before the Bishop’s Court, and he was ordered to pay his brother’s widow a yearly sum of twenty-six florins. Meanwhile Bernardina had taken refuge in her mother’s house, and did not finally receive the payments due to her THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 1 1 until the 13th of May 1500, when the matter was finally settled. In the records of these law-suits Raphael is expressly named as present in court on June 1499, but as absent from Urbino in the following May. While his uncle and stepmother were wrangling over this heritage, it was his mother’s relations who watched over his childhood. Both his grandfather and grandmother left him money in their wills, and his uncle Simone Ciarla acted a parent’s part by the orphan boy, who loved him as dearly as if he had been his own father. Unfortunately we have no record of Raphael’s boyhood. Vasari’s story of his being taken to Perugia in 1495 placed by his father in the school of Perugino, to the bitter grief of his mother, is now proved to have been mere fable. His mother, we have seen, died when he was eight, his father when he was eleven years old. Later writers have assumed that he entered Perugino’s atelier in 1495, a year after Giovanni Santi’s death. But we know now that between 1493, when Perugino married a young wife in Florence, and 1499 he was engaged in executing works at Florence or in other cities, and seldom visited Perugia. The question remains who was Raphael’s first master.^ It is this question to which Morelli has given so convincing and decisive an answer. H is conclusion on this point is now accepted by the majority of foreign and English writers, but still rejected by some authorities, among whom we regret to name Messrs. Crowe and Caval- caselle and Dr. Bode. Raphael no doubt learnt the elements of drawing and painting from his father, and as a child gave sign of that quick receptiveness and keen sense of beauty which were his especial gifts. His uncle, seeing him to be a boy of remarkable promise, naturally placed him in the workshop of the only painter of note then living in Urbino — Timoteo Viti. This artist had left home in 1490, to enter the shop of Francia the goldsmith- painter of Bologna, and after serving his apprenticeship had returned to Urbino in April 1495, to the great sorrow of his master, who records the departure of this favourite pupil in the following entry of his journal ; “■ 1495. — April my dear Timoteo left me. May God give him all happiness and prosperity.” Timoteo, then twenty-six years of age, is described as a pleasant, genial youth, who was the best of fellows and gayest of companions, and sang and played on the lyre with rare skill. His joyous nature and refined tastes soon won the love of young Raphael, and a strong friendship sprang up between the two rilE EARL 7 ' WORK OE RAPHAEL 1 2 artists. I’Kis circumstance, together with the remarkable likeness that is apparent between the early works of Raphael and those of Timoteo, led Vasari to hazard the statement that the boy of twelve was the teacher of a master fourteen years older than himself, and already a painter of con- siderable reputation, and to add that Raphael, struck by Timoteo’s youthful promise, invited him to Rome in 1518, to assist him in painting the Sibyls of St. Maria della Pace. It is now proved that Timoteo settled at Urbino in 1495, where he was employed by successive Dukes as their Court-painter, that in 1501 he married Girolama Spaccioli, a girl of a noble Urbino family, held the post of chief magistrate in 1513, and seldom if ever left Urbino again. That he was the first to influence Raphael’s genius is clearly proved by a glance at the works which he painted at this period, more especially the altar-piece of the Virgin between St. Vitale and St. Crescenzio, in the Brera. Both in this picture, which long bore the name of Raphael, and the later St. Margaret at Bergamo or the Magdalen at Bologna, we find the same broad hands and feet, the same oval faces and heads bent on one side, the same naive and graceful feeling that we are accustomed to ascribe to Raphael. Timoteo, in the words of Morel li, was in fact Raphaelesque before Raphael, or rather, it was from his teaching that the young Raphael derived those marked characteristics of the Ferrarese school which Timoteo had learnt from Francia and Costa, and which are evident in his pupil’s early productions. I'he first undoubted work of Raphael, painted in all probability when he was about sixteen, and still studying at Urbino under Timoteo Viti, is the Vision of a Knight. This famous little picture, which, together with the pen-and-ink drawing from which it was traced, is now one of the treasures of the National Gallery, came originally from Urbino into the Borghese Collection, when the Duchy was annexed to the Papal See. The subject breathes the very essence of that courtly and romantic atmosphere vvhlch haunted the palace of Urbino, and may well have been inspired by the Duchess Elizabeth herself. This accom- plished lady, we are told by a sixteenth-century writer, the architect Serlio, was the first to honour the son of her old friend Giovanni Santi with her patronage, and Raphael may have painted this little allegory for the decoration of her chamber, just as Costa and Mantegna painted their pictures of Parnassus and the Muses for Isabella d’Este’s grotto Portrait of Timoteo Viti. By hit-nselj. British Museum. 14 ■THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL at Mantua. The story of the choice which each traveller who sets out on the journey of life has to make between work and idleness, between duty and pleasure, may have been taken from the Greek myth of Hercules or from the romance of some Renaissance poet. The youthful knight lies asleep upon his shield under a laurel-tree, between two fair maidens. The one, simply robed in purple, offers him a book and a sword ; the other, gaily attired in a pale-blue robe with cherry-coloured sleeves, and wearing a coral string tv/isted in her hair and round her neck, holds out a myrtle spray, and seeks to lure him into her smooth and pleasant paths. Every detail in the picture — the attitude of the two maidens, the forms of their hands and faces, the fall of their short skirts, the handkerchief twisted round their heads, the very shape of the trees and rocks in the background, recall Timoteo Viti’s works, and prove the young painter to have inherited the tra- ditions of Ferrara and Bologna masters. At the same time, the timid, careful drawing, the simple directness with which the story is told, stamp the picture as the work of a very youthful artist. The same childlike na'ivete, the same miniature-like finish, appear in another work of this period, which Morel li considers to have been executed even earlier than the Vision of a Knight. This is the little St. Michael of the Louvre, which Raphael painted on the back of a draughtboard for Duke Guidobaldo, and which Lomazzo (1548) mentions as being in the collection of the French king at Fontainebleau. The picture may have been sent as a gift to King Louis XII. in acknowledgment of his courtesy, when in 1503 he conferred the order of St. Michael upon the Duke’s youirg nephew Francesco della Rovere, just as Raphael’s St. George was presented to Henry VII. after Guido- baldo had been made a Knight of the Garter. But, whatever its exact date may be, this St. Michael is clearly a work of Raphael’s early youth, d'he warrior-saint, armed with the red-cross shield and brandishing his sword above his head like some paladin of old, might have stepped straight out of some nursery-book of fairy tales. His youthful face and glittering helmet recall the sleeping Knight of the Dream, his green wings are touched with gold after the manner of Timoteo’s saints, and the scaly dragon and grotesque monsters crawling away behind him are the offspring of the same childish fancy. But the smoking towers of rHE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 15 the City of Dis in the background, and the poor souls tortured by cruel demons or wandering to and fro under the weight of their leaden capes, “ like the hooded monks of Cologne,” are evidently borrowed from Dante’s Inferno. So exact is the rendering of the torments endured The Visio7t 0 / a Knight. By Raphael. National Gallery. by the thieves and hypocrites, as described in the 23rd and 24th Cantos of the Inferno., that we are inclined to think young Raphael must have copied this part of his picture from one of those splendidly illustrated copies of Dante that were the glory of the ducal palace. rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 1 6 It this may help to explain the Dantesque imagery of the St. Michael., the third work which Morelli ascribes to this period — the Fhree Graces., now at Chantilly — doubtless owes its origin to some antique gem or miniature from some Latin manuscript in the ducal collection. But anything less classical than this little picture it would be hard to conceive. It has certainly no connection with the marble group at Siena which Pinturicchio copied on a sheet of the Venice Sketch-book, and which was long supposed to have supplied Raphael with this motive. There is nothing Greek or statuesque about these three maidens who stand side by side in the green mountain valley, each laying one hand on her sister’s shoulder and holding a golden apple in the other. Their rounded limbs and rosy Gees are modelled on the true Ferrarese type, and bear an unmistakable likeness to Francia’s saints, while they wear the same coral beads as the maiden with the myrtle-spray, in the Vision of a Knight. The drawing is marked by the same anxious endeavour, and, if here and there the outline of a limb may be defective, there is a soft charm and grace about these youthful forms that bears witness to an ideal of beauty already present to the young painter’s mind. The picture, which is under seven inches in height and less than five Inches in breadth, must have been painted at the close of his Urblno period, probably just before he left Timoteo’s side to seek further teaching in Perugino’s school. Like the Vision of a Knight and the St. Michael., it once adorned the halls •of Guidobaldo’s palace, until it passed with the first-named picture into the Borghese Collection. A singular interest belongs to these three little pictures, that were the first-fruits of Raphael’s genius, and which by a fortunate chance have come down to us in fair preservation, when so much of his riper work has perished. In them we see the hand of the boy of genius striving to give expression to the romantic dreams of his imagina- tion, filled already with the yearning after beauty and the passionate love of antiquity that were to attain their complete development in after life. And in a remarkable way they foreshadow the triumphs of his future years, d'hese little pictures which Raphael painted in his mountain home, under the shadow of Lauranna’s castle towers, represent the different realms of sacred story, of mystic allegory, and classical antiquity which supplied the inspiration for those great dramas that he was one day to set forth on the Vatican walls, in the eyes of all Christendom. THE EARLY WORK OE RAPHAEL 17 There is at Oxford a drawing, in black chalks, of a boy of fifteen or sixteen, with a serious and gentle face, wearing a black cap over his long locks. It is on the same paper and in the same style as another drawing which hangs close by — a head of St. Catherine bearing a palm-branch — now generally recognised to be the work of Timoteo Viti. So there can be little doubt that this lad with the graceful air and the St. Michael. By Raphael. In the Louvre. thoughtful eyes is the young Raphael, drawn by the hand of his first master, in the days when he painted the sleeping knight and the sister Graces. But this fair boy, whose happy nature and winning ways charmed young and old alike, was the hardest of workers and most unwearied of learners. He had, in fact, already formed that ceaseless habit of acquiring ideas which lay at the root of all his future greatness. From the first Raphael was never an artist of remarkable originality He did not break new ground or discard old traditions to make room B THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL for types and ideas of his own invention. He was, in point of fact, less of an innovator than Michelangelo or Lionardo, than Giorgione or Mantegna. But he possessed, in a measure rarely given to any human being, the power of assimilating the impressions which he received from a thousand different quarters. Every picture that he saw, each artist whom he met, became to him a fresh spring of inspiration and a new source of strength. But while he was always receiving fresh impressions and learning new lessons, he never forgot the old or lost the knowledge to which he had once attained. In a wonderful way he knew how to select and combine, to blend and transform all these separate elements into one perfect and harmonious whole. His pure taste and exquisite feeling gave the final touch, and his originality, it has been happily said, was his excellence. PART II PERUGIA 1 500 — 1504 Raphael in the school of Perugino — His first pieces — The Dudley Crucifixion — The Coronation ofi the Vatican — Infiuence of Pinturicchio — Siena frescoes — Venice Sketch-book — The Berlin Madonnas — The Conestabile Virgin — St. Sebastian at Bergamo — Portrait of Perugino — The Sposalizio— St. George of the Louvre — Raphael at Urbino — Giovanna della Rovere' s letter. At the close of the fifteenth century Perugino was the most popular painter in Italy. That mystic strain which Umbrian masters had derived from Benozzo Gozzoli, the scholar of Fra Angelico, and which had been further developed by the presence of the great sanctuary of Assisi, reached its highest technical perfection in the works of the Perugia master. These pensive Madonnas, clad in richly ornamented robes and set in peaceful landscapes under summer skies, these saints whose upturned faces and yearning eyes spoke of a haven of rest after the storms of this life, had a peculiar fascination for the men and women of that troubled age, tired as they were with the din of perpetual warfare. Perugino’s pictures were accordingly in great request, and orders flowed in from all quarters. In 1500, he had just completed the frescoes of the Hall of Exchange in his native city, and was engaged to supply altar-pieces for the convents of Vallombrosa and the Certosa of Pavia, for the nuns of the Pazzi in Florence, and several of the principal churches in Perugia. It was no easy task to execute all these commissions, and great ladies, such as Isabella d’Este, had to wait years before their demands could be satisfied. R 2 20 ■THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL Under these circumstances it was natural that young Raphael, having served his apprenticeship under Timoteo Viti, should enter Perugino’s workshop as one o! the large band ot scholars and assistants who were employed in carrying out his designs. The Umbrian master’s fame stood high at the Court of Urbino, and he was well known to Duke Guido- baldo’s sister, Giovanna della Rovere, the wife of the Prefect of Rome, whose uncle. Pope Sixtus IV., had employed him to paint the frescoes of the Sistlne. Raphael’s own father had spoken of him in his poem as a divine painter, and as lately as 1497, he had finished the great altar-piece at Fano, for the same church which Giovanni Santi had formerly adorned with his works. In all probability Perugino had been personally actjuainted with the Court-painter of Urbino, but, whether he had known the lather or not, the son soon won his affection. His talent for draw- ing, as well as the charm of his manners, says Vasari, captivated Pietro, who pronounced at once that he would become a great master. I'he busy life of Perugia itself and its turbulent streets offered a strange contrast to the quiet scenes in which Raphael’s early youth had been spent. From the first the loveliness of the Umbrian landscape and glory of those wide views over the Tiber valley sank deep into his soul. The sight of Assisi, with its memories of Dante and St. Francis, and the great double church where generations of artists had painted their masterpieces in turn, may well have stirred his impressionable nature. But there were other scenes nearer home which touched him still more deeply. Alter a long spell of fierce warfare between the rival tactions whose cjuarrels tore Perugia in twain, the Oddi had been expelled and the Baglioni had triumphed. For a time peace reigned in the distracted city, churches were rebuilt, and art flourished within its walls. But soon the fiery passions which filled the breast of the leading citizens broke out again, and the summer of 1500 witnessed one of those bloody tragedies that were common in the annals of Perugia. In June Astorre Baglioni celebrated his wedding with great rejoicing, but a fortnight later he was murdered in cold blood by his kinsman Grifone, who in his turn fell under the avenger’s sword. A general massacre followed, the churches were desecrated, and the streets ran with blood. The scene of Atalanta Baglioni bending in the agony of her grief over her dying son is touch- ingly described by the chroniclers of the day, and must have come back The Crucifixion. By Raphaci. In the possession of L. Mona, Esq. THE EARLY WORE OF RAPHAEL 23 to Raphael’s mind, when at her bidding, six years afterwards, he painted his picture of the Mother of Jesus mourning over her dead son. But, while these scenes of strife and bloodshed were happening without, Perugino’s young assistant was busy within the workshop, learning the secrets of the great Umbrian’s art. The singular receptiveness of his mind made him the best of scholars. As he had already absorbed all the grace and sincerity of Timoteo’s art, so now he surrendered himself wholly to Perugino’s influence, and before long imitated his style so closely that, in Vasari’s words, it became almost impossible to distin- guish his work from that of his master. This is certainly true of the first independent picture which he painted after his arrival at Perugia, Yhe Crucifixion^ for the Gavari chapel in the Dominican church at Citta di Gastello. The altar-piece must have been executed in 1501 or early in 1502, before the Vitelli, who reigned in this hill-set town, and were closely allied to the Duke of Urbino, were driven out by Caesar Borgia. “ Raphael Urbinas F.” was the signature which the young master placed on the foot of the cross in the centre of the picture, “ but for which name,” remarks Vasari, “it would certainly have been taken for Perugino’s work.” The composition is exactly similar to that of Yhe Crucifixion which Perugino had lately painted in St. Francesco del Monte at Perugia, and which he has repeated in other renderings of the subject at Siena or in Florence. As in the elder master’s work, the cross divides the picture in two equal parts, and the sun and moon and angels, hovering in the air to catch the blood in their cups, are symmetrically arranged to fill up the space between the limbs of the crucifix. The gently sloping hills and slender pines of the landscape, the four isolated figures in the foreground, are all in Perugino’s usual style. The Christ is copied from Yhe Crucifixion which he painted for the Brotherhood of the Calza, the St. John from his Deposition in the Pitti, the other figures of the Virgin, the Magdalen, and St. Jerome are taken from his altar- pieces in St. Maria Maddalena de’ Paz-zi. In each instance Raphael has made use of his master’s studies, but has inspired them with his own deeper and finer feeling. Their attitudes are less conventional, their movements truer to nature, the way in which the Virgin clasps her hands or the Magdalen lifts her tearful gaze to the cross, speak of genuine love and sorrow. Slight as these changes are, they make us feel the presence 2 + ■THE EH RITE [FORK OF RAPHAEL of a new and more intense life, and realise how soon the scholar was to surpass the master at whose feet he sat. Raphael’s next important work was the Coronation of the Virgin^ now in the Vatican Gallery. This altar-piece was painted in 1502, by order of a widowed lady of the Oddi family, for a chapel which she had endowed in the cathedral-church of Perugia. The design of the upper part, if not Head of an Jngcl. Study for the Coronation of the Virgin. By Raphael. British Museiun. actually by Perugino’s hand, is evidently borrowed from the noble Assumption which he painted about 1500 for the convent of Vallombrosa. 1 fere Christ, throned upon the clouds, and surrounded by a host of tiny cherubs, places the crown on PTs mother’s brow, while four boy-angels play musical instruments at His feet. But in the lower half of the picture, where Perugino had after his wont introduced four single figures of saints, Raphael represents the Apostles standing round the open tomb. Some of THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 25 the twelve look down wonderingly into the empty grave, where lilies and roses are blossoming, others turn questioning eyes on their com- panions, but St. James on the right and St. John on the left lift yearning faces heavenwards, and in the centre of the group St. Thomas, holding the Virgin’s girdle in his hands, looks upwards with the same love and longing in his eyes. The whole style of the picture, the black shadows and bright colouring, the shape of the hands and the folds of the drapery, show how closely Raphael had adopted his master’s methods. But even here there is a youthful loveliness about his seraphs to which Perugino never attained, and more than one of the studies for the picture, especially the beautiful drawing of the Angel playing the violin in the British Museum, remind us of his old master, Timoteo Viti, while the head of St. James (in the Malcolm Collection) is copied from a drawing by Pinturicchio. The influence of Perugino is especially apparent in the predella of the Coronation. This consists of three subjects — the Annunciation., Presenta- lion in the Yemple, and Adoration of the Magi., which are also in the Vatican Gallery. In painting the two first he was able to make use of the similar subjects in the predella of his master’s altar-piece at Fano. This he did after his wont, adding some types, altering others, and refining and improving all. The cartoon of the Annunciation is now in the Louvre, and that of the Presentation at Oxford, while a fine drawing for part of the Adoration of the Magi is in the Museum of Stockholm. In all the annals of Italian art there is no more lovely rendering of the old subject than this lowly Virgin seated alone under a stately colonnade of Corinthian pillars, receiving the message of the angel, who, running in with swift, bird-like movement, hails Mary as blessed among women. The long evening shadows fall upon the tessellated squares of the brown marble floor, but, through the columns of the open portico, we see the western sun shining on the valley and the towers of Urbino beyond. In the Presentation., of which we have the study at Oxford, the arrangement of the figures, the High Priest standing between Joseph and Mary and bending down to receive the Child, and the font and pillar on which it rests, are faithfully copied from Perugino’s predella at Fano, but the smile of the Virgin’s face and the action of the Child, who turns in sudden alarm to his mother, are of Raphael’s own 26 rflE EARL 7 '' WORK OF RAPHAEL invention. The third picture is a more original and animated com- position, in which the artist brings the kings from the far east to worship with the shepherds of Bethlehem at the manger throne, and introduces a number ot horsemen and spectators, after Pinturicchio’s manner, in the background. In 1 502 the invasion of Caesar Borgia spread terror throughout Romagna. One by one the princes who had opposed his ambitious plans took flight, and the chief cities opened their gates at his approach. LI rhino yielded without a blow, and Duke Guidobaldo narrowly escaped with his life. The Baglioni, who had long held sway in Perugia, fled, and the exiled Oddi returned. The general confusion and insecurity may have been one reason which led Perugino to leave his native city and return to Florence in the autumn of this year. In his absence, Raphael now attached himself to the other distinguished artist who, after painting a succession of great works for two Popes and adorning the Cappella bella ot Spello with another remarkable series of pictures, had lately returned to his native city, and had succeeded Perugino in his office as one of the city priors. Bernardino Betti, commonly called Pinturicchio, or the little painter, from his small stature, and sometimes also Sordicchio^ because of his deafness, was in many respects the very reverse of Perugino. He worked hard all his life, but never attained wealth or popularity, and was unfortunate alike in his public and private life. He made an unhappy marriage, and had few friends, being, according to Vasari, of a strange and capricious temper. But from the first Raphael seems to have been attracted by the man’s genius, and he became fast friends with this artist, who was thirty years his senior. The influence which his new teacher acquired over him, the hold which the Umbrian’s picturesque and dramatic concep- tions gained upon his Imagination, soon became apparent in Raphael’s works. He copied Pinturicchio’s heads, adopted his types, and caught the peculiarities of his style. The result has been that in many cases the elder master’s works have been assigned to the hand of his younger and more famous comrade, and Morelli discovered no less than 1 1 8 of Pinturicchio’s drawings, in different collections, among the works ascribed to Raphael. This confusion is partly due to Vasari’s assertion that Raphael supplied Pinturicchio with the design of his frescoes in the library at THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 27 Siena, and accompanied him to that city in 1504 to assist in their execution. The inaccuracy of this statement, which Morelli calls the pure invention of Sienese municipal vanity, has now been generally recognised. It is, as the same writer remarks, highly improbable that a master of Pinturicchio’s age and experience, who had been Court-painter to Pope Alexander VI., should have borrowed designs from a youth who was thirty years his junior, or allowed him to execute an important part of the work. But as a matter of fact, there is no trace of Raphael’s hand in the frescoes, nor any evidence that he ever visited Siena. On the contrary, his name is not even mentioned by Sigismondo Tizio, the priest of the parish in which Pinturicchio lived at Siena, who wrote a full and accurate account of the artists that were employed in the decoration of the Cathedral library. Morelli has also dispelled another delusion of comparatively recent invention— the theory which ascribed to Raphael the authorship of a volume of one hundred and six drawings bought by the painter Boss! early in this century. The greater part of these drawings, to which Boss! himself first gave the name of the Venice Sketch-book, are now proved to be the work of Pinturicchio. Among them are not only designs for his frescoes at Siena, but for many of the paintings which he executed in Rome before the birth of Raphael. Others are plainly studies or copies by inferior hands, and of the whole collection, two only are the work of Raphael himself. These two drawings are on a single sheet of paper of different size and texture from the rest of the sketch-book, and are studies of men and horses which he copied at Florence from Lionardo’s cartoon of the Battle of the Standard. On the other hand, Raphael, there can be no doubt, availed himself repeatedly of Pinturicchio’s designs in the pictures which he painted after Perugino’s departure for Florence. Chief among these are two Madonnas in the Berlin Gallery, which are of especial interest as the first paintings of the Virgin and Child that we have from his hand. Two still earlier versions of the subject, however, are to be found among his drawings. These are the little pen-and-ink sketch of the Virgin and Child at Oxford (Braun, No. 10), and a chalk drawing of the Virgin offering the Child a pomegranate, in the Albertina at Vienna. Both of these retain strong marks of Timoteo Viti’s influence, and were probably executed in 1500, during the first year of Raphael’s residence at Perugia, 28 rilE EARLY IVORK OF RAPHAEL if, indeed, the Oxford sketch does not belong to an earlier date. The Child is ot the same type as Francia’s babies, and the background of lake and towers recalls the plates in the Correr Museum, which Timoteo Viti designed for Isabella d’Este. The Virgin holds an open book before the Child, a favourite motive, which Raphael was to repeat in many different forms during his Umbrian and Florentine period. The Madonna of the Albertina is copied from a drawing by Perugino at Berlin, but the face and hands are still fashioned on Timoteo’s model, and the expression of the gentle Virgin is of the same character. The reading Madonna of the Solly Collection, now in the Berlin Gallery (141), is, on the contrary, entirely Peruginesque in treatment, and is copied from a drawing by Pinturicchio in the Salle des Boites at the Louvre. Here the Virgin’s long and narrow face, pursed-up mouth, and hooded drapery are of purely Umbrian type, and the Child holding a finch in his hand exactly resembles Peruglno’s Infants. Of the same date (1502-3), and also taken from a drawing by Pinturicchio in the Albertina, is the Virgin between St. Jerome and St. Francis (145) in the Berlin Gallery. The Madonna turns lovingly to the Child seated on her knee with his hand raised to bless, and on either side, St. Jerome in his cardinal’s hat and St. Francis lifting his pierced hands, look on with the tenderly ecstatic air common to Lbnbrian saints. The shape of the Virgin’s face and hands and the gold embroideries of her mantle, the frizzled locks of the Child and the cushion upon which he is seated, are all closely imitated from Pinturicchio. There is a distinct advance in the third Madonna of this period — the circular panel executed, it may be towards the end of 1503, for the uncle of Domenico Alfani, Raphael’s friend and fellow-worker in Perugino’s bottega. This beautiful little picture is taken from the same design of Perugino which Raphael had already copied in his drawing of the Madonna with the pomegranate. But here he has altered the pome- granate into a book, and changed the position of the Child, who turns over the pages in childish delight. He has removed the nun-like veil from the Virgin’s brow to show the hair smoothly braided on each side of her youthful face, and while preserving his master’s original design has given us a far sweeter and more natural picture of the Mother and Child than any which Perugino painted. In the background, we have not only the "J ^ :V .-r-^y *.' . . . - >i4 'ii' rHE EARLY IVORK OF RAPHAEL 29 usual landscape of green slopes and slender trees, but a lake with a boat sailing upon its waters and distant hills capped with the first winter’s snow. This little work, charmingly composed and painted with gem-like finish and brightness, passed from the heirs of the Alfani to the Conestabile- The Cone stabile Madonna. By Rnpkaei. Hermitage Museum., St. Petersburg, From a photograph by Braun, Clement et Cie, by permission. Stalfa family, and was sold in 1871 by Count Scipione Conestabile of Perugia to the late Empress of Russia for the sum of 330,000 francs. Two other small pictures also belong to this period, and must have been painted about 1503 at Perugia. One is the little Salvator Mundi 30 riiE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL in the gallery of Brescia, a half-length figure of the risen Christ wearing a crown of green thorns, and raising his pierced hand in blessing, which originally belonged to a family of Pesaro, in the Duchy of Urbino. The other is the St. Sebastian bearing a dart in his hand, now in the Bergamo Gallery. The lovely features of the youthful martyr recall the faces of Perugino’s Saints and the Evangelist of Raphael’s own Crucifixion., the rich embroideries of his tunic might have been painted by any Perugian Sartist, but in the mass of the Saint’s curling locks and the beauty of his expression we recognise the hand of Raphael. Another noticeable feature which is to be seen in this picture, as well as in the Berlin Madonnas and in the saints and angels of the Coronation., is the peculiar formation of the eyeball, and the way in which the iris and pupil are blended together. This peculiarity, which is now recognised as an absolutely crucial test of Raphael’s Peruginesque works, is also apparent in the portrait of Perugino that was discovered by Morelli in the Borghese Gallery. This most interesting work came to Rome from Urbino with the Vision ofi the Knight and the Yhree Graces., and, in spite of its distinctly Italian character, was long ascribed to Holbein. Although in bad condition and evidently left unfinished, the portrait is a marvel of vivid and forcible representation. The sitter is a man of about fifty, richly clad in a fur-trimmed suit with white frilling at his throat, and wearing a black cap on his flowing locks of dark-brown hair. The black tunic is only sketchily painted, and the position of the cap has been shifted by the artist himself, during the progress of his work. The features resemble the portrait of Perugino in the hall of the Cambio, and the general character of both face and dress agree with all that we know of this able and prosperous master who painted heavenly faced saints to order, and at the same time had so keen an eye to his worldly interests. Many years ago, an acute critic the late Otto Miindler, pronounced this picture to be the portrait of Perugino by himself, and the present catalogue of the Borghese Gallery ascribes the work to that master. But Perugino never painted a portrait so full of power and vigour, so intensely real and living. The jet-black eyes sparkle with light, the nose and mouth, as Morelli remarked, are more sharply modelled than in Perugino’s work, and the hair is treated with true Raphaelesque grace and feeling. The picture may be safely accepted Portrait of Perugino. By Raphael. In the Borghese Gallery., Rome. From a photograth by D. Anderson, b'j permission. rilE EARLT WORK OF RAPHAEL 33 as a youthful work of Raphael, painted either before Perugino’s de- parture in 1502, or during the brief visit which he paid to Perugia, in the autumn of 1503. Both as the portrait of the master with whom he had been so closely connected, and as the first of a long line of masterpieces in this direction, the Borghese picture is of the deepest interest. Towards the end of 1503, Raphael received orders for two large altar- pieces from the churches of Citta di Gastello. The death of Alexander VI. had altered the state of affairs in Umbria, the dreaded Borgia had fled, the Vitelli had returned to Citta di Gastello, the Baglioni to Perugia, and peace was restored to the distracted land. It was then, according to Vasari, that Raphael painted the Coronation of St. Nicholas of Folentino for the Augustinian monks of the hill-set city. This time he made use of a design by Pinturicchio, now in the Musee Wicar, at Lille, in which the saint is represented as trampling upon the devil and crowned by God the Father in the presence of the Virgin and St. Augustine. The subject agrees with a copy of the picture that was made early in the last century, but the original altar-piece was sold by the monks in 1787, to Pope Pius VI., and disappeared during the French invasion of Rome. The Sposalizio which Raphael painted for the Franciscans of Citta di Gastello was carried off by a French general in 1798, but rescued by Giovanni Sannazzaro of Milan, who bequeathed it to the hospital of that city in 1804. Two years later it was purchased by the State and placed in the Brera Gallery. The marriage of the Virgin had been a favourite theme in Italian art from the days of Giotto and Angelico, but, often as it was seen in predellas and small panels of the life of Mary, it was never the subject of a large altar-piece, until, in 1501, Perugino painted his Sposalizio for the Chapel of St. Joseph in the cathedral of Perugia. Here the ring of the Virgin, stolen by a friar from the treasury of Siena, was preserved as a sacred relic and jealously guarded by the brotherhood of St. Joseph, from whom Perugino received the commission. This picture, which had lately left his master’s shop, Raphael now took for his model. So closely indeed did he follow the composition that it has been supposed that the Franciscans of Citta di Gastello desired him to supply them with a copy of the Perugia altar- c 34 THE EARLT WORK OF RAPHAEL piece. The size and the shape of the pictures are exactly similar ; the number of personages introduced, the general arrangement and scheme of colour, are the same in both works. A classical temple occupies the centre of the background, and in front the high priest joins the hands of bride and bridegroom in the presence of the wedding party, a group of six men surrounding Joseph on one side, while as many women of different ages stand round the Virgin on the other. Yet, if we compare the two pictures, the general effect is entirely different. Raphael has, first of all, reversed the position of the bridal pair, and placed the women on the right, the men on the left hand of the priest. He has made the temple smaller, the figures larger, and altered Perugino’s octagonal building into a graceful Renaissance structure, recalling Bramante’s Tem- pietto at S. Pietro Montorio of Rome. He has modified the variegated hues of the dresses, and, without subduing their brightness, has brought them into more perfect harmony. He has placed the temple on a higher and broader flight of steps, throwing a softened shadow over the back- ground, and revealing the lovely expanse of distant hill and woodland, on either side. Above all, he has broken up the rigid symmetry of the principal group, and has given both actors and spectators an air of animation and natural grace that is wholly lacking in Perugino’s figures. There is more youth and charm about Mary, greater manliness and earnestness in the face of Joseph. The disappointed suitors breaking their rods, and the fair maidens who wait upon the bride, are no longer isolated figures looking idly out of the picture. They are stirred by a common interest and united by one and the same purpose. In a word, Raphael has lifted the whole composition to a higher level, and trans- formed a dull and formal scene into a picture of the purest beauty and pathos. This, we feel, is the last word that Umbrian art had to say, the highest point of perfection to which it could attain. And yet, strictly speaking, the SposaVvzio is not the work of an Umbrian painter. As long as Perugino and Pinturicchio were at Raphael’s side, he could never wholly free himself from the limitations of their art, but left to himself, he went back unconsciously to his early manner, and drew his hands and faces and laid on his colours in the old way. It is singular how this work, which was directly modelled on an Umbrian pattern, bears more distinct traces of Timoteo Viti’s influence than any other that "S^{ap<>iu f.. C^J-nx ■ .“y/;, ,■ //, nrruujc c ' I hi- ""Virgin THE EARLT WORK OF RAPHAEL 36 the old court life was once more lived within its walls. When Raphael reached Urbino, Duke Guidobaldo was absent in Rome. He had been appointed Captain-General of the papal forces by Pope Julius II., and did not reach Urbino until late in the summer. But the good Duchess b..lizabeth was acting as regent in her husband’s stead, and the young painter was sure of her favour and kindly interest in his career. For her he now painted the little St. George of the Louvre, that companion picture to the St. Michael which, if Morelli’s conjecture is correct, he had painted four or five years before. Like that interesting little work, and like the Ehree Graces., the St. George bears strong marks of Ferrarese influence, while in drawing and technique it exhibits a very decided advance. I’he pen-and-ink sketch in the Uflizi is in the style of Raphael’s Peruginesque drawings, but at the same time bears a marked likeness to Francia’s early pictures of St. George in the Corsini Palace. The hero mounted on his white horse, with plumes and mantle waving on the wind, rides full tilt at the dragon, and lifts his sword to strike the monster dead. On the ground at his feet lie the broken fragments of his red and white lance, and in the landscape behind the captive princess is seen, with outstretched arms, hurrying away from the scene of conflict. The lost picture of Christ on the Mount of Olives., which Vasari describes as so admirable a work, and one that was highly prized by the ducal family of Urbino, may have been painted during this visit ; but Guidobaldo’s tlnie and thoughts were engaged by his new office, his treasury was exhausted, and the State had not recovered from the ruinous effect of Borgia’s invasion. There seemed no prospect of important artistic undertakings in the Court of LIrbino, and Raphael’s thoughts were already turned in another direction. That he renewed his old intimacy with Timoteo Viti and worked in his old master’s atelier is more than probable. The beautiful silver-point study for a Virgin’s head from the Malcolm Collection was evidently taken from the same model as Timoteo’s drawing, which formerly went by the name of Raphael’s sister, and may belong to these days. In that face we already see the germ of the early Florentine Madonnas, of the Granduca and the Cardellino Virgins. But wonderful news came from Florence — of the colossal David which had lately been set upon the public square, of the cartoons for the decoration of the Great Hall upon THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 37 which the two great artists Michelangelo and Lionardo were engaged. Perugino himself was there ; and his scholar, who may have met Lionardo Study of a Id^omati. By Bimoteo riti. In the Malcohn Collection. when he came to Perugia two years before in the service of Ca:sar Borgia, and had certainly seen Michelangelo’s famous Cupid in the palace 38 rilE EARL7' WORK OF RAPHylEL ot’ Urbino, longed to mingle in that august company and have a share in these great works. Before long, the opportunity which he sought pre- sented itselt. In September, the Duke arrived from Rome, followed by a brilliant train, bringing with him his widowed sister Giovanna della Rovere and her young son Francesco, who had succeeded his father as Prelect of Rome, and was commonly known as II Prefettino. On the 14th, a splendid ceremony was held in the cathedral, when the Papal Nuncio solemnly delivered the baton of Captain-General of the Holy See into Guidobaldo’s hands. This was followed, four days later, by a still more imposing function, when the Duke recognised his young nephew Francesco della Rovere, the son of Pope Julius’s brother, as his adopted heir, and his subjects in turn swore fealty to their future lord. Mean- while Raphael was graciously received by the Prefetessa, as Giovanna della Rovere was called, for the sake of his dead father. She remembered how, long ago, Giovanni Santi had painted an Annunciation for her at Sinigaglia, to commemorate the birth of her son on the 25th of March 1490, and, hearing ot Raphael’s wish to visit Florence, she addressed the following letter to the Ganfalonlere of that city : — “I’oTHE FIigh and Magnificent Lord and Most Honoured F.A.THER, Pier Soderini, Gonfaloniere of Florence.— The bearer of this letter will be Raphael, painter of Urbino, who being endowed with natural talent for his profession has decided to spend some time in Florence, in order to study art. And since his father was a very excellent man and dear to me, and the son is a discreet and gentle youth, I am very fond of him, and wish him to attain to perfection. I there- fore recommend him most earnestly to your lordship, and beg you, for my sake, to give him your help and favour on every occasion, and whatever services and kindness your lordship may show him, I shall consider as rendered to myself, and shall esteem this to be the greatest favour on the part of your lordship, to whom I now commend myselt. “ Giovanna Felicia Feltria della Rovere, “ Duchessa di Sorii, Prefetessa di Rof?ia. “Urbino, i Oct. 1504.” The genuineness of this letter has been disputed by some writers because Bottari, who first published it in the last century, gave a mistaken THE EARLY IVORK OF RAPHAEL 39 reading of the MS., which made it appear that Giovanni Santi was alive when the letter was written. But, as the last editor ol Vasari, Professor Mil anesi, has pointed out, the word which Bottari gives as so {il padre Mado?ma. From a Drazving by Raphael. In the Malcolm Collection. suo') was no doubt fo, the Umbrian form of/}) (was), and the sentence in which Giovanna speaks of Raphael’s father, is in the past and not in the present tense. The actual MS. belonged to a valuable Florentine 40 THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL collection of autograph letters, including several from Pier Soderini himself and the Medici, which were put up to auction at a sale in Paris, in January 1856. On this occasion Giovanna della Rovere’s letter was sold for two hundred francs, and the contents were fully described in the catalogue of the auction at the Salle Sylvestre. The present owner of the letter is unknown, but there seems no sufficient reason for disputing the authenticity of a document which agrees with both the date of Raphael’s first visit to Florence, and with those frequent allusions to the ducal family, and more especially to Giovanna della Rovere and her son, that we find in the painter’s own letters. But, whether the letter of the Prefetessa is genuine or not, there can be no doubt that, towards the close of 1504, Raphael came to Florence. PART III FLORE NCR 1 504 — 1 508 Raphael's first visit to Florence — His friends and patrons — Studies of Lionardo and Michel- angelo — Portraits of the Doni — Early Madonnas — Works at Perugia — Ansidei and Sant' Antonio Madonnas — Fresco of San Severo — Visit to IJ rhino — Castiglione, Bembo, and the Ducal Court — -The St George at St. Petersburg — Second group of Madosinas — The Entombment — -Letter to his uncle — -Last works of the Florentine period. “ In Florence, more than in any other city, men become perfect in all the arts, especially in that of painting. There the fine air makes men naturally quick to praise and blame, prompt to see what is good and beautiful, unwilling to tolerate mediocrity. The keen struggle for life sharpens the wits, and the love of glory is stirred in the hearts of men of every profession.” Such, according to Vasari, were the words in which Perugino’s old Umbrian master urged him to seek his fortunes in Florence. And now the same impulse drew his still more gifted scholar to the banks of Arno, and at the age of twenty-one Raphael came to Florence, as a learner, in the words of his patroness — per imparare. The moment was a memorable one. Never, even in the Magnifico Lorenzo’s days, had so brilliant a company of artists met together within the city walls, as that which assembled in January 1 504, to decide on the site of Michelangelo’s David. Among the architects present on that occasion were Cronaca and the brothers Sangallo ; among the sculptors, Andrea della Robbia and Sansovino ; among the painters, Cosimo Roselli, Sandro Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo, Lorenzo di Credi, Pietro Perugino, and Lionardo da Vinci. All of these were still living when Raphael came to Florence, with the single 42 THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL exception ot bilippino, who had died of an acute attack of angina pectoris^ on the 1 8th of April, leaving his Deposition for the church of the Servi Brothers to be finished by Perugino. The presence of so many illustrious masters naturally provoked that generous spirit of rivalry which, Vasari assures us, was generated by the pure air of Florence. Great works were produced amidst the enthusiastic applause not only of the artists but of the whole city. Lionardo’s cartoon of the Holy Family had hardly been finished when the Servi friars threw open their convent doors and allowed the people to come in and see the wonderful work with their own eyes. “During two days,” we read, “the hall was thronged with men and women of every rank and age — such a concourse, in short, as we see flocking to the most solemn festivals, all hastening to behold the marvel wrought by Lionardo.” The sight ot Florence itself — of that dome which had as yet no rival, of the palaces and churches which lined the streets, of the frescoes that filled chapels and convent-cells with light and colour, of Della Robbia’s blue-and-white Madonnas and angels shining down above the crowded market-place and in the cjuiet corners of side alleys — might well delight Raphael’s soul. The city and the works of art he saw there, says VTsari, alike seemed divine to him, and he asked nothing better than to take up his abode there, and spend the rest of his days at Florence. He went everywhere and saw everything. His quick eye took note of each different object in this new and wonderful world, and his hand recorded countless forms and shapes which he could never have dreamt of in his Umbrian days. He lingered in the dim chapel of the Carmine until he knew every figure in Masaccio’s works by heart, he studied (jhlrlandajo’s heads and Donatello’s marbles, and made careful drawings of Michelangelo’s David on sheets which may still be seen in the British Museum. But it was Lionardo above all others who attracted him by the science and beauty of his art. “ He stood dumb,” Vasari tells us, “ before the grace of his figures, and thought him superior to all other masters. In fact, the style of Lionardo pleased him better than any which he had ever seen, and, leaving the manner of Pietro, he en- deavoured with infinite pains to imitate the art of Lionardo. From having been a master, he once more became a pupil. At the same rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 43 time, Michelangelo’s mastery of the human^ frame made a profound impression upon his mind, and he applied ^himself with ardour to learn Group in the Venice Sketc/?-book, from Lionardo's Battle oj the Standard. By Raphael. the principles of anatomy. Night and day he devoted himself to the task, and studied the structure of the body, the movement and fore- 44 rilE EARLY WORK OE RAPHAEL shortening of limbs, and connection of nerves and muscles, with such unwearied industry, that in a few months he learnt what others accjuire in the space of years.” The letter of La Prefetessa does not seem to have brought him any commission from the Gonfaloniere, who had already the two greatest living painters in his service, and many other excellent artists awaiting his commands. But the recommendations of his Urbino friends and the influence of his master Perugino — above all, his own charming nature, brought him many friends, and made him a general favourite in artistic circles. He was a frequent visitor at the shop of the distinguished architect Baccio d’Agnolo, where artists of every age and rank met on winter evenings to discuss problems connected with their craft. All the well-known painters and sculptors in Florence were to be seen at these gatherings in turn, and sometimes, although rarely, the great Michelangelo himself would look in. But since he had lately quarrelled with Lionardo, and had been summoned before a court of justice to explain the abusive language which he had used of Perugino, openly calling him goffo nell'arte^" his presence may have inspired more awe than pleasure among his younger comrades. Of the youths whom Raphael met at Baccio d’Agnolo’s shop or worked with in the Brancacci chapel, Ridolfo Ghir- landajo and Sebastlano Sangallo were his chief friends. The former was the son of the great painter who had lately died, and, like Raphael, had declared himself to be an ardent admirer of Lionardo. The latter was a first-rate draughtsman, whose gay temper and witty sayings had earned for him the nickname of Aristotile. But the young painter from Urbino was soon to form a still closer friendship with a master of a very different type, the gentle and serious Baccio della Porta, who five years before, in his grief at the death of Savonarola, had left the world to take the vows of the Dominican order, and was now a friar of S. Marco. That mag- nificent fresco of the Last Judgment^ which, in the darkest hour of his despair at the loss of his beloved master, he had painted in the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, made a powerful impression on Raphael’s mind and exerted a marked influence on his future work. The painter of that noble fresco, now known as Fra Bartolommeo, had lately taken up his brush again, and was at work on an altar-piece for the Badia. Ere long Raphael became his intimate friend, and learnt from him the secrets of the fine Angelo Doni. Raphael. Pitti Gallei'y, Florence. From a photograph by Braun, Clement et Cie., by permission. 46 rHE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL colour and modelling which were the charm of the Frate’s pictures. Among the visitors who came to Baccio d’ Agnolo’s gatherings was Taddeo Taddei, a wealthy Florentine of cultivated tastes, who corresponded with Bembo and was a liberal patron of the fine arts. Baccio d’Agnolo had built him a palace in the Via de’ Ginori, and Michelangelo had carved one of his finest Holy Families for him in stone. Taddeo soon made friends with Raphael, and was never happy unless the young painter were in his house and at his table. And Raphael, writes Vasari, “who was the most amiable of men (r/f era la geutilezza stessa)^ not to be outdone in courtesy, painted two pictures for him, which Taddeo valued among his most precious treasures.” “Show all honour to Taddeo, of whom we have so often spoken,” wrote the painter to his uncle Simone, when his friend was about to visit Urbino, “ for there is no man living to whom I am more deeply indebted.” Another noble Florentine who shared Raphael’s intimacy was Lorenzo Nasi, afterwards one of the City priors. Either of these friends may have recommended him to the wealthy merchant Agnolo Doni, one of the most discerning and at the same time one of the most niggardly lovers of pictures in Florence. This cautious personage, whose palace was a museum of antique and contem- porary art, had lately bought Michelangelo’s famous Holy Family of the Tribune, after wrangling with Buonarotti for months over the price. Now in his anxiety to obtain good pictures at the lowest possible price, he employed the young painter from Urbino, who was as yet little known in Florence, to paint his own portrait and that of his wife, a lady of the Strozzl family. Both of these portraits, which hang to-day in the Pittl Gallery, are admirable examples of Raphael’s close and faithful study of life. They are painted with the same minute attention to detail, the same anxious rendering of each single hair, that we note in the Borghese portrait. The wealthy merchant in his black damask suit and red sleeves, with refined features and keen anxious gaze, his staid, richly dressed wife in her blue brocades and jewelled necklace, well satisfied with herself and all the world, are living types of their class. Yet in the form of the pictures, in the pose of Maddalena Doni’s head and of her placidly folded hands, we are conscious of a new influence. If from the picture we turn to the pen-and-ink sketch in the Louvre, we see at a glance that Lionardo’s Mona Lisa was Maddalena Doni. By Raphael. Pitti Gallery., Florence. Fro?n a photograph by Alinari, by permission. THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 49 ill Raphael’s mind when he painted Maddalena Doni’s portrait. The cut of the dress, the ripple of the hair, the very folds of the bodice are exactly copied from that famous picture, which Raphael must have seen in Francesco Giocondo’s house at Florence. Only instead of Lionardo’s rock landscape, he has sketched a view of Umbrian hills and Urbino towers, framed in between the columns of an open loggia. There is, we must confess, a charm in the drawing which is lacking in the picture. This maiden with the dreamy eyes and youthful face was the painter’s ideal; the other was the actual woman, Maddalena Doni, the rich merchant’s wife, a subject, it may be, not very much to his taste, but none the less to be painted with perfect accuracy and truth. But Raphael’s dreams and studies were soon to bear richer fruit. The earliest, and in some ways the most perfect of that long series of Madonnas that were the glory of his second period, belong to the first year which he spent in Florence. The chronological arrangement of Raphael’s Madonnas has been attempted, but not yet finally accomplished, by many writers, and still remains a matter of uncertainty. But we may safely assume the Madonna del Granduca to have been one of the first which the artist painted after he came to Florence in 1504. We know nothing of its origin or history. It may have been the picture which he painted for the Prefetessa or one of the two Virgins, which Vasari tells us, were ordered by Duke Guidobaldo. All we know is that this Madonna was found in the last century in the house of a poor widow, and that in 1799 it was bought by the Grand Duke Ferdinand III., who would never part from it again, and carried it about with him on all his journeys. But one thing is certain : when Raphael painted this picture, the face of the Virgin with the downcast eyes which he had drawn in Timoteo’s atelier at Urbino was still in his mind. With that vision before his eyes, he drew the sketch now in the Uffizi, taking for his model this time some Tuscan peasant-girl whom he had seen with her babe on her arm. Then he painted the beautiful picture on the dark-green panel, with no thought in his head but simply that of mother and child. Nothing could well be simpler or more natural. The child rests on his mother’s arm, and his little hands stray over her neck in perfect trust and safety. The Virgin stands directly facing us, wearing a blue mantle without gilding or orna- ment, and a transparent veil over her fair hair. The whole beauty of the D 50 rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL picture lies in the serene peace of the Maid-mother’s face, in the calm teatures and downcast eyes that tell of a deeper bliss and a diviner hope than mortals dream of here. “ Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Closely linked with the Virgin of the Granduca is the Casa Tempi Madonna. This picture was seen by Cinelli in 1677, after which it was lost sight of for many years, and was eventually found by a doctor of the family, covered with dust and dirt, in a forgotten corner. It was bought in 1829, by King Ludwig of Bavaria, for 16,000 scudi, and is now in the Old Pinacothek of Munich. Although in a bad state of pre- servation, and sadly disfigured by the restorer’s hand, this Casa Tempi Madonna still retains much of its original charm. In this mother and child meeting in fond embrace, Raphael has set the very ideal of maternal love before our eyes. The Virgin is represented standing up and clasping the child in her arms. She wears a blue mantle over a red bodice and sleeves, a light veil on her hair, and a gold-striped handkerchief round her shoulders. Her face is turned to the right, and she is about to press a kiss on the face of the eager child, who raises his face to hers. The Orleans Madonna, once in the possession of Louis the Fourteenth’s brother, and now, after many vicissitudes, restored to his descendant the Due d’Aumale, is generally supposed to have been painted for Duke Guido- baldo, since it agrees with the following entry in the inventory of the Lrbino (fallery; “ A little picture of a Madonna with Christ in her arms on wood by Raphael.” The description, however, might apply equally to either of the two last-named pictures, or to the Cowper Madonna. The Virgin is seated in her lowly chamber, and bends tenderly over the child, who, resting one foot on her right hand and holding on with both hands to the hem of her bodice, looks round with a beaming face. A dark-red curtain hangs on the wall behind, and a row of jars and pots and wine-flask stand on the shelf above. It might be some Tuscan cottage-home, where a young peasant-mother is nursing her first-born child. The same strong and joyous Child, the same Virgin with the yellow hair and gold-threaded veil, meet us in the little picture at Pan- shanger, bought by Lord Cowper when he was Minister at Florence at the end of the last century. But here the Virgin is seated in the open air, and the sun shines on a well-known scene in the neighbourhood mm Tke Casa Tempi Madonna. By Raphael. Old Pinacothek, Munich, hrom a photograph by Hanfstclngl and Co., by permission. rHE EARLJ^ WORK OF RAPHAEL 53 ol’ Florence — the hill of San Miniato with its tall cypresses, and the cupola and campanile of Cronaca’s newly built church, la bella villanella which Michelangelo loved. There is, perhaps, more actual charm and beauty in this youthful Madonna and in the smiling child who clings with both arms about her neck, than in any other of Raphael’s Virgins. Often as he repeated the same subject in his later Florentine days, endless and varied as are the changes which he was to ring on the old theme, he never surpassed these four Madonnas. In their ideal loveliness and human tenderness they bear witness to the close study of nature which was one great result of his Florentine experiences. As we turn over those sheets covered with countless sketches of mothers and children, which are still to be seen in the Albertina or the British Museum, we feel that the sight of Lionardo’s cartoons, of Michelangelo’s and Fra Bartolommeo’s great works, has not been in vain. He has gone nearer to nature, and has learnt the lesson which she has to teach. And in the light of the new learning, the old has lost its charm. He has forgotten Perugino, and put away Umbrian things. But while Raphael was scaling new heights at Florence, his presence was much desired at Perugia, and in the autumn of 1505 he returned there to execute several important commissions. The nuns of Monte Luce, a convent of Poor Clares, outside the town, desirous of plac- ing a picture of the Assumption above the high altar of their chapel, consulted the leading citizens of Perugia as to the choice of an artist, and were advised by them, as well as by certain Franciscan friars who knew his work, to employ “ Maestro Raphaello da Urbino, the best painter of the day.” The contract, we learn from the convent records, was signed on the 23rd of December 1505, when the factor of the com- munity paid Raphael thirty gold ducats in advance. But other engage- ments took up the painter’s time, and he never did more than make a preliminary sketch for the picture which he had agreed to paint. The years went by, and still the poor nuns waited in vain, until at length, in despair of ever obtaining a work from Raphael’s hand, they agreed, in 1517, to a fresh arrangement, and allowed their altar-piece to be painted by his pupils Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni. Among the works which he now pledged himself to execute at Perugia was the altar-piece for the family chapel of the Ansidei, in the 54 rilK EARLY IVORK OF RAPHAEL Church of St. Fiorenzo, and the Madonna and Saints for the nuns of St. Antony of Padua. Both these pictures are now in London. The Ansidei Madonna was bought from the priests of St. Fiorenzo in 1764 by Gavin Hamilton tor the third Duke of Marlborough, on condition of supplying a copy in place of the original, and sold by the late Duke in 1885, to the Trustees of the National Gallery for ^70,000. The Adadonna of Sant' Antonio was sold by the nuns, in 1677, to pay their debts, and, after passing through the hands of the Colonna family and the late King ot Naples, has of late years been lent to the South Kensington Museum by its present owner, the Duke of Castro. The composition of both works follows the favourite Umbrian tradition ; in both the Virgin sits enthroned under a lofty canopy, wearing the same gold-embroidered mantle falling in heavy folds from her head to her feet. But in both instances, in the execution of the picture, in the figures of the Virgin and Child, and the forms and attitudes of the attendant saints, we see the influence of Raphael’s Floreiitine studies. This is already evident in the fine pen-and-ink drawing for the Ansidei Virgin at the Stadel Institute, Frankfort, copied as it is from a sketch which Pinturicchio had made for a Madonna at Spello. In Raphael’s picture the motive is still further modified. He has changed the attitude of the child, who, instead of raising his hand in blessing, looks down at the open book on his mother’s knee, and has given the Virgin’s countenance a youthful beauty and simplicity akin to his b'lorentine Madonnas. If St. John the Baptist, who stands on the left of the throne, holding a crystal crozler in his hand, and wearing a crimson mantle edged with gold over his camel’s-hair garb, recalls Perugino’s saints, the venerable figure of St. Nicholas of Bari, in his jewelled cope and mitre, is modelled with all the truth and freedom of Raphael’s later style. The date inscribed on the hem of the Virgin’s mantle has been differently read by almost every writer. Passavant and Kugler, Sir Charles Eastlake and Sir Henry Layard, give it as 1505 ; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, as 1506 ; Minghetti, as 1507. There can however be little doubt that the picture was chiefly painted during Raphael’s visit to Perugia in 1505-6, but not finally completed until a later period. The Ansidei Madonna is in a far better state of preservation than most of Raphael’s The Ansidei Madomia. By Raphael. Frotn the Picture in the National Gallery. 56 ■THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL works, and bears tew traces of inferior workmanship. This is more than can be said for the Madonna di Sant' Antonio. A split in the panel two centuries ago caused part of the surface to scale off, and the picture has suffered severely from injudicious cleaning and re-painting, while the hand of assistants is clearly visible in the lunette of God the Father., as well as in some parts of the draperies. But we recognise Raphael’s art in the central group, alike in the little St. John pressing forward to adore the Child, and in the gentle Virgin bending down to lay her hand upon his shovdder. Both children are clothed, the Christ in a white tunic and blue mantle, the little Baptist in camel-hair shirt and green and purple robes, because, in Vasari’s words, “those simple and pious women, the nuns, willed it so.” The Virgin-saints Catherine and Cecilia, who stand on either side, crowned with roses and bearing the palm of martyrdom, and their companions the Apostles Peter and Paul, recall Fra Bartolommeo’s style so forcibly, that Morelli was inclined to assign the picture to 1507 or 1508. But, like the Ansidei Madonna, the Virgin of Sant' Antonio was probably begun in 1505 or 1506, and completed, with the help of assistants, at a later date. There is certainly no trace of Raphael’s own hand in the predella of these pictures. The Preaching of St. John the Baptist, that formerly belonged to the Ansidei altar-piece, the Christ bearing His Cross, that is now Lord Windsor’s property, but which, together with its companion subjects of the Pieta and Christ on the Mount of Olives, once formed the predella of the Madonna di Sant' Antonio, are clearly the work of some second-rate l^erugian artist who served as Raphael’s assistant. The round panel long in the possession of the Duke of Terranuova, and bought, in 1859, by Frederick William IV. of Prussia tor the Berlin Gallery, may also have been painted during this visit to Perugia. Here Raphael again availed himself of a Peruginesque motive, and borrowed his idea of the Child showing St. John a Scroll, with the words Ecce Agnus Dei, from a drawing by his master, also at Berlin. But his treatment of the subject shows how far he had left his old teacher behind him. The youthful loveliness and natural movement ot Mother and Child, the rocky landscape, the very shape of the picture, are fashioned on P'lorentine models, and recall the marble roundels of Desiderio or Mino da Fiesole and Michelangelo’s Jdoni Madonna. One ^HE EARLJ^ WORK OE RAPHAEL 57 more important work, the fresco of the Erinily in the Carmelite convent of San Severe, bears the date of 1505, and must have been painted before Raphael left Perugia in the following spring. This work, which is of especial interest as the forerunner of the Vatican frescoes, has suffered terribly from cleaning and restoration. The upper part, con- taining a figure of God the Father in glory, is practically destroyed, and the lower portion has been entirely painted over. But enough remains to show us the original grandeur of the design. The figure of Christ throned upon the clouds is exactly copied from Fra Bar- tolommeo’s fresco of the Last Judgment. So too are the majestic forms of the saints seated in a half-circle on either side, whose noble heads and flowing draperies show how closely the painter had studied Lionardo’s types. Flaving reached this point, Raphael left Perugia without completing the work or painting the row of Camaldoli worthies who were to occupy the space on the lower part of the walls. In vain the good fathers waited, like the nuns of Monte Luce, hoping that the painter would some day come back to finish his fresco. Not till they heard that Raphael was dead would they allow another to complete his work. Then they employed Perugino to paint the missing figures, and the failing hand of the aged master finished the fresco which his scholar had begun in the prime of his genius. It has always been assumed, on the authority of Passavant, that Raphael went to Urbino in the spring of 1506. There is no actual record of this visit, but it is certain that during the years which he spent in Florence (1504—1508) he frequently visited his old home, and painted several pictures at the Court of Urbino. The allusion to the ducal family in his letters to his uncle, his grief at the death of Guidobaldo, and the fact that he bought a house at Urbino about this time, all support the old tradition that he spent some months at Urbino before his return to Florence in 1506. These were the most brilliant days of the ducal Court, the days which live for ever in the pages of the Cortigiano, when the most polished scholars and finest gentlemen of the day met within the palace walls and wrote sonnets and acted pastoral plays in the presence of the Duke and Duchess. Then Elizabeth herself sang verses from the .Tineid to the music of her lute, and talked of art and love with Madonna Emilia and Bembo, with Canossa 58 rHE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL and Castiglione, till the short hours of the summer night were gone and the dawn broke over the peaks of Monte Catria. Raphael may have been there that carnival time, when Castiglione’s play was acted before the Court, and his friendship with that accomplished gentleman may date from that spring-time. We know that he was often at Court, that he painted portraits of the Duke and of Castiglione himself, and made a chalk drawing of Bembo, which the Cardinal counted among the choicest treasures of his house at Padua. And tradition says that he painted a portrait of the peerless Duchess Elizabeth for her devoted knight Cas- tiglione, who wrote impassioned verses in her praise, and kept the picture of a bellissima e principalissima Signora^ by the hand of Raphael of Urbino, to his dying day. All of these are lost, and of the many portraits that Raphael painted at Urbino, the only one remaining is his own picture, which was brought to Rome from his old home in 1588, and is now in the Uffizi. There we see him as he was at three-and-twenty, with brown eyes, long locks of chestnut hair, and a singularly youthful and gentle face. The beautiful features are almost womanly in their charm, the dark eyes are full of poetry, and the black felt cap, the doublet edged with white, and quiet green back- ground, all help to give the same impression of refinement and sim- plicity. He is already a great master, “ the best painter in the land,” as the nuns of Monte Luce know, but still as gentle and modest a youth as in the days when he worked in Timoteo’s shop. He has kept the sweet and joyous nature that was the charm of his boyhood ; “jealous of none, kindly to all, always ready to leave his own work to help another,” he is still a favourite with great and small, as welcome a guest in the palace of Urbino, or in Baccio’s shop at Florence, as he will be one day among cardinals and princes in Rome. Among the other pictures which Raphael painted for the Duke of Urbino, the only one to which we can point with certainty is the St. George and the Dragon in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. This second version of the legend differs in several respects from the St. George of the Louvre, and the fine drawing in the Uffizi shows a marked advance on his former conception. The position of horse and rider is reversed, and instead of charging towards us they are seen from behind. The hero gallops past at full speed on his fiery white horse, and rising in his (^p uv'U'alt THE EARLY [FORK OF RAPHAEL 59 stirrups, drives his spear through the dragon’s coils. In the background, overgrown with bushes, is the cavern where the monster dwelt, and on the other side we see the rescued princess on her knees thanking Heaven for St. George and the Dragon. From a drazving by Raphael in the Uffizi Gallery., Florence. her deliverance. The name Raphello U. is written on the charger’s blue and gold harness, and St. George himself wears the riband of the Garter with the word Honi^ on his knee. This finely coloured and spirited little 6o T’HE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL picture was evidently painted to commemorate Duke Guidobaldo’s admission into the ranks of this illustrious order. The insignia of the Garter, which had been conferred on his father, Duke Federigo, and was now bestowed on Guidobaldo, by Henry VII., was presented to the Duke by the Abbot of Glastonbury and Sir Gilbert Talbot, when they were sent to Rome, in June 1504, to congratulate Pope Julius II. on his election in the name of the tinglish monarch. TheJ newly elected knight proudly wore his Garter on the next St. George’s Day, and held high festival on the 23rd of April, at Urbino. ii^It was customary tor foreign princes on whom this honour was conferred to send an ambassador to Ifngland, within the next year, to be installed in his master’s place. Castiglione was selected, as early as March 1505, for this mission, but did not finally set out for England until September 1506. After much care and deliberation, the Duke chose three fine chargers of the famous Urbino breed, and various other costly presents, and gave them to his messenger to lay before the King of England. Among these, it has always been supposed, was Raphael’s picture of St. George, which is now at St. Petersburg. That a St. George painted by Raphael’s hand was in Henry the Eighth’s collection of pictures is no doubt true, but the following description, from the Inventory of works of art at Westminster Palace, taken at the time of that monarch’s death, cannot apply to the Hermitage picture : — “ 126. Item. A table with the picture of St. George, his spear being broken and his sword in his hand.” ^ The words exactly describe the first St. George, painted, it is sup- posed, about 1504, for the Duke of Urbino, and now in the Louvre. In that picture the Saint is armed with a sword, and the fragments of his shattered spear lie on the ground at his horse’s feet, while in Raphael’s second version of the subject, St. George’s sword is in his sheath and he slays the dragon with his spear. There can be little doubt that it was the Louvre picture which Castiglione presented to Henry VII. on his master’s behalf, in November 1506, and that in its stead Raphael painted the second St. George, which remained in the palace at Urbino as a memorial of the Garter bestowed upon the Duke. This may have been the St. George by Raphael which Lomazzo saw in 1548 in Milan, and which is Harleian MS. 1419, in the British Museum. 1 The Madonna del Prato. - By Raphael. Belveaere Gallery., Vienna. 62 ■THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL mentioned by Passavant as belonging to M. de la None and M. de Sourdis, but in any case it came during the last century, into the Crozat Collection, from which it was finally bought by the Empress Catherine II. of Russia. Henry the Eighth’s St. George., on the other hand, after being described in Van der Doort’s catalogue of the Whitehall pictures as “Raphael’s St. George, a little picture,” was sold after Charles the First’s execution for the sum ol 150. It was bought by Cardinal Mazarin, one of the chief purchasers at the royal sale, and passed from his collection into the Eouvre. If Raphael was still at Urbino in September 1506, he must have seen Pope Julius II., as he stopped there on his way to conquer Bologna, and witnessed the splendid festivities with which that warlike pontifi' was received by the Duke and Duchess. But before the end of the autumn he was back at Florence, where, Vasari tells us, he once more devoted himself with incredible ardour to the study of art. 'Fhe cartoons of Eionardo and Michelangelo were irow exposed to public view in the Council Hall, and Raphael was among the crowd of artists who flocked to the Palazzo Vecchio to study these masterpieces, which created such an extraordinary sensation, and became, in Benvenuto Cellini’s words, “the school of the whole world.” While his friend Bastiano Sangallo copied Michelangelo’s Soldiers bathing in the Arno, Raphael drew these masterly groups of soldiers and horsemen fighting for the flag, from Lionardo’s Battle of the Standard, which are preserved in the Venice Sketch-book. But the frescoes of the Great Hall were never painted, for Michelangelo had been summoned to Rome, and Eionardo had thrown up the work in disgust, after painting a single group upon the walls, and was gone to Milan. Perugino had also left Florence, where his art was no longer as popular as in past days, and soon afterwards went to Rome. But Fra Bartolommeo remained to welcome his friend back, and with him Raphael lived during the next two years, on terms of the closest intimacy. The Dominican painter’s influence is strongly marked in the pyramidal arrangement and colouring of the group of Madonnas which Raphael painted immediately after his return to Florence in 1506. Foremost among these was the Madonna del Prato, which he painted for Taddeo Taddei, and which was sold by his friend’s descendants to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, after whose The Madonna - del Cardel/ino. By Raphael. Pitti Gallery., Florence. From a photograph by AUnari. by permission. 64 THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL death it passed, with the rest of the Schloss Ambras Collection, into the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna. The Virgin, seated on a stone bench in a flowery meadow, looks down with the sweetest of smiles on the child standing on the grass at her feet, and gently guides his steps, as he receives a cross of reeds from the hands of the kneeling St. John. The same grouping is repeated in the Madonna del Cardellino, which Raphael painted in the same year as a wedding present for Lorenzo Nasi, who had doubtless seen and admired Taddeo’s picture. Only here the action of the children is more playful, and instead of the cross, the boy Baptist places a goldfinch in the hands of his companion, while the Virgin turns from the book that lies open before her, to watch their happy faces. Unfortunately this picture, which Lorenzo Nasi treasured “ both on account of its rare excellence and of the great love that he bore to Raphael,” was broken to pieces, thirty years later, in an earthquake which destroyed the Nasi palazzo. The fragments were carefully put together again, and the Madonna del Cardellino, as all the world knows, is now one of the gems of the Pitti Gallery. A third picture in a similar style, commonly called La Belle Jardiniere^ was painted in 1507, and bought by Francis I. from Filippo Sergardi of Siena. Here the Virgin is resting in a fair garden, full of flowers and bushes, and looks down with an expression of infinite tenderness at the child, whose face is lifted in eager questioning to hers, while St. John kneels reverently at her feet. This picture is generally supposed to be the one which Vasari mentions as having been finished by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, who painted the Virgin’s blue mantle, after Raphael had left Florence. But it is doubtful if the picture to which Vasari alludes may not have been the Colonna Virgin, at Berlin, which was painted later, and clearly executed by an inferior hand. These three pictures — the Cardellino, Prato, and Louvre Madonnas — rank among Raphael’s most perfect creations. In all three the Virgin’s face is full of charm, the children are animated by the same free and natural movement, and the landscape is of the same rich and varied description. Tall pines and distant lakes, still waters sleeping in the shadow of blue mountains, heights crowned with castles and bell-towers adorn the background, and bear witness to Raphael s delight in the beauty of the natural world. The flowers and grasses of the La Belle J ardniiere . By Raphael. In the Louvre. From a photograph by Braun., Clement ct Cle, by permission. E rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 67 foreground, the very weeds and rashes, are painted with loving care and accuracy. We watch the fleecy white clouds floating across the sky, and the dim haze that rests on the hills through the summer day. Often the scenery recalls the Tuscan Apennines in the neighbourhood of Florence. In the Cardellino Madonna, for instance, we have a pictur- esque valley, such as you may see in the mountainous district at Vallom- brosa or La Vernia, with a single arched bridge spanning the torrent, on the one hand, and on the other, the Duomo and Campanile of Giotto. The bride of Lorenzo Nasi, who received this fair wedding gift from Raphael, was Sandra Canigiani, and it was for a member of her family that the Canigiani Madonna at Munich was originally painted. This picture afterwards became the property of the Medici, and was given as a wedding present to Anne de’ Medici, daughter of Cosimo III., when she married the Elector Palatine. Here St. Joseph is introduced, leaning on his staff and looking down on a group composed of the Virgin and Child, St. John, and his mother St. Elizabeth, an aged and toothless matron in the style of Andrea del Sarto. The different expression of the heads is finely given, but the formal effect of the whole has been increased by the removal of the choir of angels in the sky, and the rest of the picture has been much damaged by clumsy restoration. The name “ Raphael Urbinas ” may still be read on the hem of the Virgin’s bodice, but his assistants probably had a share in the work. There is far more charm in the Madonna with the Lamb at Madrid, sadly as this too has suffered from time and repainting. There the child sits astride on the back of a lamb, and throws both arms round its neck, a motive clearly derived from Lionardo, but carried out with true Raphaelesque grace. The landscape, with its distant lake and castle towers, its road winding up the heights,, and flight of birds across the sky, is painted with exquisite finish. The date, 1507, is inscribed on the Madrid picture. To the same year we may assign the Bridgewater Madonna, formerly in the Orleans Collection. A sheet of charming studies, in Raphael’s most delicate silver-point drawing, representing children in varied attitudes, is preserved in the British Museum, and bears witness to the pains which he bestowed upon the preparation of this work. The painter has once more gone back to his old conception, and has given us only two figures in the picture. The Virgin is of the same type as the Cardellino Madonna, but the free- E 2 68 rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL dom of the drawing and lively action of the child, turning round to seize his mother’s veil, point to a later date. Meanwhile the greater part of Raphael’s time and thoughts were devoted to the preparation of another and more important work. Before leaving Perugia in 1506 he received a commission from Atalanta Baglioni, the widowed mother of the murdered Grifone, to paint an altar-piece of the Entombment for a chapel which she had endowed in the Cathedral of that city. According to Vasari, Raphael first executed the cartoon in Florence, and finally completed the picture at Perugia in 1507. This commission was in some respects the most important which he had yet received, and the ardour with which he applied himself to his task shows how anxious he was to produce a masterpiece worthy of the occasion. The numerous and varied studies which are still to be seen in the Uffizi, the Louvre, the British Museum, the University galleries at Oxford, the Albertina, Habich, and Malcolm collections, bear witness to the immense amount of thought and labour which Raphael bestowed upon the subject. The natural difference and timidity of his nature prompted him, as before, to seek the help of other men’s ideas, and he borrowed one figure after another from familiar versions of the same theme. First of all he took the pathetic Pieta that Perugino had painted for the nuns of Santa Chiara, in Florence, as his model, and represented the dead Christ in his mother’s arms, wept over by his sorrowing disciples, in a series of studies at Oxford, and one fine drawing in the Louvre. Here the figure of St. John, standing apart and clasping his hands in an agony of despair, was borrowed from Mantegna’s famous print of the Entombment. In another study (in the Gay Collection) the Magdalen, a noble and touching figure, kneels at the feet of St. John, and fixes her sorrowful gaze on the dead Christ, while Nicodemus and two other men stand farther back. But then a sudden change came over the painter’s thoughts, and, discarding his original intention, he adopted Mantegna’s design, and represented the dead Christ carried in the arms of bearers to the grave, while the fainting Virgin, supported by the holy women, formed the subject of a second group on the right. A whole series of drawings Illustrate the progress of his thought in this new direction. In the Uffizi we have the central group. The foremost bearers are represented stepping backwards up the stone steps mE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 69 that lead to the tomb hewn in the rock, and the Magdalen, stooping tenderly over her dead Lord, holds his arm in her hand. In the Malcolm Collection there is a separate study of the Virgin and her companions, one of whom, kneeling on the ground and turning round to support the fainting mother, is copied from the Madonna of Michelangelo’s Doni picture. Another altogether different version may be seen in the accom- Sketch for the Entombment. By Raphael, llabich Collection. panying drawing from the Habich Collection at Cassel,a slight and rapid sketch, but marked in an especial manner by the peculiar lightness and bold- ness of the master’s touch. In the end, Raphael retained Mantegna’s group- ing, altering some types and modifying others in accordance with his gentler nature and more refined feeling. He kept the Magdalen, but left out the solitary St. John, and placed the beloved disciple among the bearers 70 rilE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL at the head of the group. And he framed the composition in a rich and varied landscape, making the hill of Calvary with the three crosses, as seen in Mantegna’s print, a prominent object in the view. The two groups are cleverly linked together by the action of one of the women, who looks back at the dead Christ while supporting his mother in her arms, and the influence of Michelangelo is apparent, not only in the kneeling figure, but in the limbs and body of the Christ, which recall the great sculptor’s PiePi in St. Peter’s. Unfortunately the combination of all these separate motives did not succeed in producing an harmonious effect, and the result of all these labours is distinctly disappointing. The correctness and vigour of the drawing, the variety of expression in the heads and attitudes, the skill with which these ten figures are grouped in a comparatively small space, is undeniable. But for all this Raphael’s Entombment leaves us cold and unmoved. As a triumph of academic skill it may command our admira- tion, but it lacks the spontaneous charm, the simpler and natural pathos of his finest work. This is no doubt partly the result of the excessive labour and prolonged study which he had bestowed upon the composition. It may also partly be explained by the share which his assistants had in the completion of the work. These deficiencies, however, were not felt by the painter’s contemporaries, who hailed Yhe Entombment with a general burst of delight. Vasari’s impassioned language reflects the wonder with which they looked upon this masterpiece, and saw in it a perfection beyond all that had been hitherto known in art. And in one sense they were right. Raphael had reached a point of mastery to which few artists have ever attained. In scientific knowledge and technical completeness, in the vivid representation of human life and emotion, the Urbinate had far surpassed his teachers, and stood on a level with the first masters of the day. The citizens of Perugia might well applaud his latest achievement, and had good reason to raise an Indignant protest when this altar-piece, which was the proudest treasure of their cathedral, was presented by the Franciscan friars to Cardinal Borghese, afterwards Pope Paul V. Since then Raphael’s Entombment has been the chief ornament of the Borghese Gallery, and has now been removed, with the remainder of that collection, to the villa outside the Porta del Popolo. I'he predella of this altar-piece, unlike most pictures of this class, is THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 71 distinguished by originality of subject and excellence of execution. The three Christian Graces, Faith, Hope, and Charity, are here painted in chiaroscuro on round panels, each of them accompanied by two winged The Entombment. By Raphael. Borghese Gallery., Rome. From a photograph by Alinari, bp permission. genii. Faith bears in her hand the chalice and host, as the symbol of redemption ; Hope clasps her hands and lifts her eyes heavenward in the calm certainty of unshaken trust. Charity, a Madonna-like form with a handkerchief twisted round her brows, folds three fair children in her 72 THE EARLT I FORK OF RAPHAEL arms, while two more cling to her side, and seem to ask for a share in her embrace. The sketch of this noble figure is in the Albertina Collection, on the back of another of the many studies which Raphael made for Atalanta Baglioni’s altar-piece. In October 1507, while the painter, in all probability, was still at work upon his Entombment^ he was suddenly summoned to appear before the law-courts of Urbino. Some time before this, the heirs of Serafino Cervasi di Montefalcone had sold him a house for too scudi, and had given him a nominal receipt, although the money had not yet been paid down. The Cervasi were now condemned to pay a fine of 87b scudi for having allowed the marriage of a minor in their family without legal authority, and, being unable to meet their liabilities, they applied to Raphael for the payment of his debt. On the iith of October, he appeared in court and paid the Duke’s treasurer, Francesco Buffi, the sum of 50 ducats, promising to pay the remainder of the fine before Christmas, and giving his creditors 12^ scudi as the balance of the sum due to them. This document, which was discovered by Signor Alippi in 1881, proves that Raphael was at Urbino as late as October 1507. Guidobaldo was already suffering from the lingering disease that was soon to end his life at the age of thirty-six, but his palace was still the centre of a brilliant court. Castlglione, who had returned from England in the spring, Bembo and Emilia Pla, and young Francesco della Rovere and his mother, were all there, and with their help the Duchess sought to cheer the hours of her sick husband. On this last visit, Raphael certainly renewed his Intercourse with the ducal family, and may have painted some of the portraits that have been already men- tioned. He was never to see his native city again, but the memory of these happy days did not pass away. In all the turmoil of his Roman life his old home was not forgotten. His dearest friends, Castlglione, Bembo, Bibbiena, were the men whom he had known at Urbino. Over- worked and pressed for time as he was at the Papal Court, he never lost sight of his family or failed in his duty to his uncle. “ Do not complain if I do not write,” he says in one letter ; “ I love you with my whole heart, and your name is as dear to me as that of a father.” Four years later, we find him interceding with the Pope for an Urbinate in disgrace, then again pleading the cause of a kinsman who is seeking a vacant benefice. He rHE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL 7J begs his uncle to tell the new Duke and Duchess, his old friend Francesca della Rovere and Eleanora Gonzaga, how well he is prospering, and as one of their subjects, rejoices to think that he is doing honour to them, to his family and his country. On the iith of April 1508, Duke Guido- baldo died, and Raphael, hearing the sad news, wrote the following letter from Florence to his uncle, Simone Ciarla : — “ Dear to me as a father, I have received your letter telling me of the death of our illustrious Lord Duke. May God have pity upon his soul ! Indeed I could not read your letter without shedding tears. But he is gone, and there is no more to be said. We must have patience, and bow to the will of God. I wrote the other day to my uncle the priest [Don Bartolommeo] asking him to send me the little picture which the Lady Prefetessa used as a cover. He has not yet sent it. I beg you to let him know, that I may satisfy Madonna, for I may shortly require her help. I also ask you, my dearest uncle, to tell the priest and Santa [his father’s widowed sister] that if Taddeo Taddei the Florentine, of whom we have often spoken, should come to Urbino, they must spare neither money nor pains to do him honour. I pray you also to show him kind- ness, for my sake, for I am certainly more indebted to him than to any man living. As for the picture, I have not yet fixed the price, and if possible I shall not name any sum, for it will be better for me to have it valued. So I could not tell you before what I did not know myself, and even now cannot say for certain. But from what I hear, the owner of this picture says that he will give me orders worth 300 gold crowns, for work either here -or in France. When the feast-days are over, perhaps I shall be able to tell you the price I am to receive, since I have already finished the cartoon, and after Easter shall set to work at the picture. I should, if possible, very much like to ob- tain a letter of recommendation from the Lord Prefect for the Gonfalio- nere of Florence. A few days ago I wrote to my uncle and to Giacomo, to beg them to procure this for me, from Rome. It would be very use- ful to me, on account of some work in a certain room, which his lordship can give to whom he pleases. I beg of you to ask for this, for I think that if the Lord Prefect hears it is for me, he will consent, and I com- mend myself to him many times over, as his old servant and friend. Commend me also to Maestro .... and to Ridolfo [his cousin] and 74 THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL all the others, xxi. day of April 1508. — From your Raffaelo, painter, in Florence.” We do not know if the Lord Prefect complied with this request, but he probably rendered Raphael a more important service by recommending him, a few months afterwards, to his uncle Pope Julius II. The employer of whom Raphael speaks in his letter was probably the dealer Gian Battista Palla, who acted as agent for Francis I. and many illustrious lovers of art. The cartoon on which he was engaged may have been the fine drawing of St. Catherine in the Louvre, since we know that the picture of St. Catherine now in the National Gallery was painted about this time. The Saint, in grey robe and crimson mantle, is leaning against the wheel of martyrdom looking up with an air of saintly resignation in her eyes. A gleam of sunlight, beaming through the clouds, falls upon her face like a ray of hope from another world. The landscape is soft and rural : village-roofs peep out among the trees along the shore of a still lake, and low hills rise in the distance, while the flowering grasses and dandelion-seed in the foreground are there to tell us how soon death comes to all and how short is the day of youth and joy. “ In the morning it is green and groweth up, in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.” Among other works of this period are the Colonna and Nicolinl Madonnas. The former was first the property of the Salviati of Florence, then of the Colonna of Rome, from whom it was purchased by Bunsen for the Berlin Gallery. The latter was bought by Lord Cowper from the Nicolini of Florence, and is now at Panshanger. Both are finely designed, but executed at least in part by assistants. A certain affectation in the Virgin’s air, as well as the attitude of the Child, betray the touch of an inferior hand. At this period of his life Raphael seems to have been in the habit of supplying his friends at Perugia with designs for pictures, and the museum at Lille contains a carefully shaded drawing of a Holy Family which he sent to Domenico Alfani. Here no less than six figures are introduced — Zacharias and Elizabeth in the background, the Virgin and children in front, and St. Joseph in the act of giving the infimt Christ a pomegranate. The cherubs in the sky are not unlike the bov-anorels of the San Sisto, and the forms of distant hills and THE EARLT WORK OF RAPHAEL IS trees are all indicated. On the back of the sheet we read the following >ilines in Raphael’s handwriting : — St. Catherine. By Raphael. From the picture in the Nationat Gallery. “ Remember Menico, to send me the strambotti (songs) of Ricciardo, about the tempest which overtook him on his journey.” According to 76 niE EARLY WORK OE RAPHAEL Grimm, Raphael here alluded to a passage of Pulci’s Morgan te Maggiore. “ Remind Cesarino [the artist Cesare di Rosetti] to send me that sermon, and commend me to him. Remember also to ask Madonna Atalanta to send me the money, and see that it is in gold, and tell Cesarino to remind her to do this. And if I can do anything more for you let me know.” Such paintings as the Virgin with the Beardless St. Joseph at St. Petersburg and the Madonna of the Palm in the Bridgewater Gallery were probably executed from similar designs, and passed for Raphael’s work in later years. Two other pictures were begun by him during that last summer at Florence, but left unfinished at the time of his departure. One of these was the altar-piece known as the Madonna del Baldacchino., ordered by the Dei family for their chapel in the Church of St. Spirito. A Virgin and Child very similar to the Nicolini and Bridge- water Madonnas are enthroned under a domed canopy, and at their feet, two lovely boy-angels are singing from the scroll of music which they hold in their hands. The seraphs, who, hovering in mid-air, draw back the curtains on either side, and the saints who stand on the steps of the throne — Peter and Bernard on the right, James and Augustine on the left — bear a marked likeness to the similar figures in Fra Bartolommeo’s Marriage of St. Catherine., d.n(\ afford another proof of the close community of thought and style that existed between these two masters. After Raphael’s death, this picture, which remained unfinished in his studio, was bought by Monslgnor Turini, the Papal Datary, and placed in the Cathedral of his native city of Pescia. In the last century it was purchased by a Tuscan Grand Duke, who employed the artist Cassana to finish Raphael’s work, and placed it in the Pitti Gallery. The other was the little picture of the Virgin and Child with St. John which Clement XI. presented to the Empress Elizabeth in the last century, and which is now in the Esterhazy Gallery at Buda-Pesth. The original cartoon for this Madonna, in the Uffizi, is far more lovely than the picture itself. The kneeling mother and eager child are drawn with the same delicate grace as the Madrid Virgin, and in the background, Raphael has given us a glimpse of some Tuscan valley with a mill-stream descend- ing between wooded banks and a hill crowned with towers. In the picture itself, this landscape was altered, and a background of ruined temple and cliffs afterwards added by one of Raphael’s pupils. But the drawings THE EARL7 WORK OF RAPHAEL 77 of this period as a rule excel the finished pictures in form and beauty of expression. Nothing, for instance, can be finer than the Santa St a. Apollonia. By Raphael. liable h Collection. Apollonia of the Habich Collection, a standing figure with a profile of the same type as St. Catherine and the Graces in the Vatican. Like most 78 THE EARLY WORK OF RAPHAEL of Raphael’s drawings at this time, this study is executed in black chalk, a practice which he had lately borrowed from Fra Bartolommeo and now frequently adopted instead of the pen-drawing common in Perugino’s school. But at this time of his life Raphael, like other masters of his age, was obliged to avail himself largely of the help of assistants, in order to satisfy the demands of his patrons. He was now an original and independent artist, able to stand alone, and second to none in his profession. He had learnt all that Perugino and Fra Bartolommeo had to teach, and the separate currents of Ferrarese, of Umbrian, and of Florentine painting were united in his art. All that he needed now was a wider field, a sphere where his powers of brain and hand might be displayed on a grander scale, before the eyes of a larger world. This was what he sought when he asked Duke Francesco to plead his cause with the Gonfaloniere of Florence, and begged for leave to paint a single room in the Palazzo Vecchio, all unconscious of the Vatican halls that were awaiting him. His opportunity soon came. Whether the young Duke recommended his friend, whether Bramante suddenly remembered his fellow-citizen, or whether Michelangelo himself told his Holiness that the painter of Urbino was the man for his work, the Pope’s summons reached him that autumn, and at twenty-five, Raphael went to Rome and entered on the last stage of his glorious career. INDEX Agnolo, Baccio d’, 44, 46, 58 Albertina (Vienna), 27, 53, 68, 72 Alexander VI., 27, 33 Alfani, 28, 29, 74 Alippi, 72 Andrea del Sarto, 67 Angelico, Fra, 33, 93 Ansidei family, 53 Ansidei Madonna, see Mado>ina Assisi, 19, 20 Baglioni, 20, 26, 68, 72, 75 Bartolommeo, Fra, 44, 53, 56, 57, 62, 76 — 78 Belvedere (Vienna), 60, 64 Bembo, 57, 72 Bergamo, 30 Berlin, 27, 28, 30, 56, 74 Bernardina di Parte, 10, ii Bibbiena, 72 Bode, 1 1 Bologna, ii, 12 Borghese, 16, 30, 31, 33, 46 Borgia, Ctesar, 23, 26, 33, 35 -37 Bossi, 27 Bottari, 38, 39 Botticelli, 41 Braccaleone, 8 Bramante, 34, 78 Bi'ancacci, 44 Brera, The, 12, 33 Brescia, 30 British Museum, 24, 25, 42, 67, 68 Buda-Pesth, 76 Buffi, 9, 72 Bunsen, 74 Cagli, 8 Canigiani, 67 Canossa, 57 Cassana, 76 Castel Durante, 8 Castiglione, 6, 58, 60, 72 Castro, Duke of, 54 Catherine II., 62 Cellini, Benvenuto, 62 Cervasi, 72 Chantilly, 14 Charles I., 62 Christ on the Mount of Olives, 36 Ciarla, Bartolommeo, 73, 74 Ciarla, Magia, 7, 9 Ciarla, Simone, li, 46, 73 Cinelli, 50 Citta di Castello, 23, 33 Colbordolo, 7 Coronation of the Virgin, 24, 25, 30 Coronation of St. Nicholas of folentino, 33 Correr Museum, 28 Corsini Palace, Costa, 12 Cowper, I.ord, 74 Cowper Aladonna, see Madonna Credi, Lorenzo di, 41 Cronaca, 41, 53 Crowe ami Cavalcaselle, li, 54 Crucifixion, Jhc, 21, 23, 30 Desiderio, 56 Donatello, 42 Doni, Angelo, 45, 46 Doni, Maddalena, 46, 47, 49 Eastlake, Sir C. , 54 Elizabeth, Empress, 76 Iflizabeth, see LJ rhino. Duchess of Emilia Pia, 57, 72 Entoinhnient, 7 ’he, 69, 70, 71, 72 d’Este, Gianfrancesco, 10 d’Este, Isabella, 9, 10, 12, 19, 28 d’Este, Lodovico, 10 Esterhazy Gallery, 76 Fano, 20, 25 Federigo, see Urbino, Duke of Ferdinand III., 49 f erdinand. Archduke, 62 Ferrara, 6 Florence, 6, ii, 23, 26, 27, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46, 49, 5°, 53, 57, 62, 64, 68, 73, 76, 78 Fontainebleau, 14 France, 73 Francia, ll, 12, 16, 28, 35 Francis L, 64 Frankfort, 54 Frederick William IV., 56 Gay Collection, 68 Ghirlandajo, 42, 44, 64 Giocondo, Francesco, 49 Giorgione, 18 Giotto, 33 Glastonbury, Abbot of, 60 Gonzaga family, 10 Gonzaga, Eleanor, 72 Gonzaga, Elizabeth, see Urbino, Duchess of Gozzoli, Benozzo, 19 Grimm, 76 Guidobaldo, see Urbino, Duke of Ilabich Collection, 68, 69, 77 Hamilton, Gavin, 54 Henry VIE, 60 Henry 5TI I., 60, 62 Holbein, 30 Julius II., 36, 38, 62, 74 Kugler, 54 Lauranna, Luzio di, 6, 16 Layard, Sir II., 54 Lille, 33, 74 Lionardo, 18, 27, 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 49, 53, 57, 62, 67 Lippi, Filippino, 4t, 42 Lomazzo, 14, 60 Louis XII., 14 Louvre, The, 14, 17, 25, 28, 35, 36, 46, 62, 65, 68, 74 Ludwig of Bavaria, 50 Madonna, Ansidei, 53 — 56 ; del Baldacchino, 76 ; ■with the Beardless St. Joseph, 76; known as the Belle Jardinilre, 64, 65 ; Bridgewater, 67, 76 ; Canigiani, 67 ; del Cardelli no, 36, 63, 64, 67 ; Casa 7 'enipi, 50, 51 ; and Child {Berlin), 28 ; and Child with ht. John, 76 ; Colonna, 64, 74 ; Conestabile, 29 ; Confer, 50; del Grandnca, 36, 49, 50 ; with the .80 INDEX Lamb, 67 ; NicoUui, 74, 76 ; Orleans, 50 ; of the Palm, 76 ; del Prato, 61, 62, 64 ; 'Phe Peading, 28 ; di Sant’ Antonio, 54, 56 ; di Perraniun’a, 56 ^Madrid, 67, 76 Malatusta, 7 Malcolm Collection, 36, 37, 68, 69 Mantegna, 8, 9, 12, 18, 68, 69, 70 Mantua, 8, 10, 14 Marlborough, Duke of, 54 Masaccio, 42 Mazarin, 62 Medici, 39, 40, 67 Melozzo da hOrli, S Menico, 74 Michelangelo, 18, 37, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 53, 56, 62, 69, 70, 78 Milan, 33, 60, 62 Milanesi, 39 Mino da Fiesole, 56 Montefeltro family, 6 Montefeltro, Elizabeth di, see Urbino, Duchess of Montefeltro, Eederigo di, see Urbino, I)uke of Montefeltro, Guidtdraldo di, see Urbino, l)uke of Montefiorentino, 8, 9 Morelli, 5, 6, II, 12, 14, 16, 26, 27, 30, 36, 56 Miindler, 30 Munich, 50, 51, 67 Muntz, 8 Xajiles, King of, 54 Nasi, Lorenzo, 46, 64, 67 National Gallery, 12, 34, KK, 7; None, M. de la, 62 ■Oddi, 20, 24, 26 •f)xford, 17, 25, 27, 28, 68 Padua, 54 J’alla, ti. B., 74 Panshanger, 50, 74 Paris, 40 Passavant, 54, 57, 62 Paul V., 70 Pavia, 19 Penni, Francesco, 53 Perugia, ii, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 29, 33, 35, 57, 68, 70, 74 Perugino, ii, 16, 19, 20, 23—28, 30, 31, 33- 35, 37, 41, 42, 44, 53, 54, 57, 62, 68, 78 Pesaro, 30 Piero di Cosimo, 41 Piero della Francesca, 8 Pinturicchio, 16, 25, 26 28, 34, 54 Pitti Palace, 23, 45, 46, 62, 64 Pius VI., 33 Porta, Baccio della, see Bartolommeo, P'ra Pulci. 76 Kaphael, his Irirth and parentage, 7 ; his appren- ticeship to Timoteo Viti, 1 1 ; his first un- doubted works, II, 14; becomes the pupil of Perugino at Perugia, 19 ; conies under the inlluence of Pinturicchio, 26 ; his return to Urbino, 35 ; patronised by the Montefeltri, 35 ’ goes to h lorence, 40 ; comes under the intluence of Fionardo and P'ra Bartolommeo, 44, 46 ; returns to Perugia, 53 ; revisits Lhliino, 57 ; returns to P'lorence, 62 ; re- ceives a commission from Julius II., 74 ; he goes to Rome, 78 Robbia, Della, 41, 42 Romagna, 26 Romano, Giulio, 53 Rome, 12, 20, 27, 30, 33—35, 60, 73, 78 Roselli, Cosimo, 41 Rosetti, Cesare di, 76 Rovere, P'rancesco della, 14, 38, 73 Rovere, Giovanna della, 20, 38 — 40 Russia, Empress of, 29 Saint Apollonia, 77 Saint Catherine, 74, 75, 77 Saint George, 35, 36, 58, 59, 60, 62 Saint Michael, 14, 16, 17, 35 Saint Petersburg, 29, 30 Salvator Miaidi, 29 Salviati, 74 San Miniato, 53 Sangallo, 41, 44, 62 .Sannazzaro, 33 .San .Severo, 57 .Sansovino, 41 Santi, Bartolommeo, 10, 11, 73 .Santi, Giovanni, 7 — 10, 20, 38, 39 Santi, Santa, 73 Sanzio, see Raphael ■Savonarola, 44 ■Schloss Ambras Collection, 64 Sergardi, Filippo, 64 .Serlio, 12 Siena, 16, 23, 27, 64 Sinigaglia, 38 Sistine Chapel, 20 ■Sixtus IV., 20 Soderini, 38, 40 ■Solly Collection, 28 Sourdis, M. de, 62 South Kensington Museum, 54 Spacciola, 12 ■Spello, 26, 54 Sposalizio, Lo, 33—35 Stockholm, 25 Strozzi, 46 Taddei, Taddeo, 46, 62, 64, 73 Talbot, Sir Gilbert, 60 'Phe Three Graces, 16, 30, 36 Tizio, 27 Turini, 76 Uccello, 8 Uffizi, 35, 49, 58, 59, 68, 76 Umbria, 6, 33 Urbino, 6—9, ii, 12, 20, 25, 26, 35 — 37, 46, 49, 57, 60, 62, 72, 73 LI rhino, Duke Federigo of, 6, 60 Urbino, Duke Francesco of, 73, 78 ; see also Rovere Urbino, Duke Guidobaldo of, 8, 9, 14, 16, 20, 26, 36, 38, 49. 50, 57, 58, 60, 62, 72, 73 Urbino, Duchess lileanora of, 73 Urbino, Duchess Elizabeth of, 8 — to, 12, 35, 57, 58 Vallombrosa, 19, 24, 67 Vanderdoort, 62 Vasari, II, 20, 23, 26, 33, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49, 62, 64, 68, 70 Vatican, 9, 16, 24, 77, 78 Venice Sketch-book, 16, 27, 43, 62 Vision of a A'night, 12, 14, 16, 30 Vitelli, 23, 33 Viti, Timoteo, ll — 14, 17, 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, 34, 36, 37, 49, 58, 78 i ! 1 ■"f i A ,VT;* 1 atjjjj ■