Always called Raphael, was born at Urbino in 1483. His father died
when he was eleven years old, and the boy was placed by his uncles,
who became his guardians, with Perugino. His handiwork at this time
is no doubt to be traced in many of Perugino’s pictures and frescoes;
and, as may be seen, he was an important coadjutor with Pinturicchio
at Siena. The earliest picture known to be painted entirely by himself
is a “Crucifixion,” in the collection of Lord Dudley, done at the age
of seventeen, which closely resembles the style of Perugino. In 1504
he first visited Florence, where he enjoyed the friendship of Francia
and Fra Bartholommeo, and made acquaintance with the works of Leonardo
and Michelangelo—new influences which considerably affected his style.
With the exception of short visits to Perugia, Bologna, and Urbino, he
was resident in Florence until 1508. In that year he went to Rome at
the invitation of Pope Julius II., and was for the rest of his life
continually in the employment of that pontiff and his successor, Leo
X. Raphael died on his birthday, the 6th of April, 1520, aged exactly
thirty-seven years.
Raphael’s manner as a painter is divided into three styles, corresponding
with the broad divisions of his life’s history. Unlike Michelangelo,
whose genius and individuality is stamped on the earliest works from
his hand, Raphael gained, as his experience of what had been done by
his contemporaries was enlarged, a deeper and further insight into his
own powers. His first, or Peruginesque style, characterizes those works
which he produced while still the companion of his master, before his
first visit to Florence; of these pictures the most important are the
“Sposalizio” (or “Marriage of the Virgin,”) at Milan, and the “Coronation
of the Virgin,” in the Vatican. His second, or Florentine, style covers
the four years from his arrival in Florence in 1504, to his departure for
Rome in 1508; here the manner of Fra Bartholommeo had great influence
upon him; to this period belong the “Madonna del Cardellino” (“of the
Goldfinch,”) in the Uffizi, “La Belle Jardinière,” of the Louvre, the
“Madonna del Baldacchino,” in the Pitti (which was left incomplete by
Raphael, and finished by another hand), and the “Entombment” in the
Borghese Gallery, at Rome, his first attempt at a great historical
composition. It is in his third, or Roman, style that Raphael fully
asserts that sovereignty in art which has earned him the name of Prince
of painters, and appears as the head of his own school, which, generally
called the Roman School, might perhaps, as he collected round him
followers from all parts of Italy, more fitly be termed the Raphaelesque.
This third period includes all his great frescoes in the Vatican, with a
host of easel pictures; for, short as Raphael’s life was, his works are
wondrously numerous, and our space permits mention of only a few of even
the most celebrated.
It has been questioned whether Raphael’s art gained by what he learnt
from Michelangelo, some critics affirming that his earlier style is
his best. This, however, must be considered to be entirely a matter of
taste. Most painters—unless, like Fra Angelico, so entirely absorbed in
the mystical side of their art as never to change their style—as they
gain in power of expression, lose something of their youthful emotional
fervor; and it is possible to assert that in the magnificent design of
the “Incendio del Borgo” the dramatic element is more in evidence than
in the “Disputa.” But what is lost on the emotional and religious side
is compensated for by the gain in power of representation; and it is
difficult to stand before the cartoon of “The Miraculous Draught of
Fishes,” and not to confess that Giotto himself could not have imparted
a more implicit trustfulness and childlike belief in the power of the
Redeemer to the look and gesture of St. Peter; and while the magnificent
simplicity of the youths drawing the net is conceived in an equal spirit
of truthfulness to nature, the grandeur of style and the knowledge
displayed in the drawing is so much pure gain on his earlier manner.
The Loggie, or open corridors of the Vatican, were also adorned by
Raphael’s scholars with a series of fifty-two paintings of Biblical
subjects from his designs; the whole series was known as “Raphael’s
Bible.”
In 1515 he was commissioned to design tapestries for the Sistine Chapel;
of the ten cartoons (distemper paintings on paper) for these tapestries
three have been lost; the other seven after many dangers and vicissitudes
came into the possession of Charles I. of England. They are perhaps the
most remarkable art treasures belonging to England, and are at present
exhibited, by permission of Her Majesty, in the South Kensington Museum.
Among the greatest oil pictures of Raphael’s third period may be
enumerated the “Madonna di Foligno” in the Vatican; the “Madonna della
Sedia” in the Pitti Palace at Florence; the “Saint Cecilia” at Bologna;
the “Madonna of the Fish,” and the picture of “Christ Bearing His Cross,”
known as the “Spasimo,” in the splendid collection at Madrid; the
“Madonna di San Sisto” at Dresden, which obtained for the artist the name
of “the Divine;” and finally the “Transfiguration” at the Vatican, the
sublime picture on which his last working hours were spent, and which was
carried at his funeral before its colors were dry.