CHAPTER IV.

LIONARDO DA VINCI, 1452-1519--MICHAEL ANGELO, 1475-1564--RAPHAEL,

1483-1520--TITIAN, 1477-1566.

We have arrived at the triumph of art, not, indeed, in unconsciousness

and devotion, but in fulness and completeness, as shown in the works of

four of the greatest painters and men whom the world ever saw. Of the

first, Lionardo da Vinci, born at Vinci in the neighbourhood of

Florence, 1452, it may be said that the many-sidedness which

characterized Italians--above all Italians of his day--reached its

height in him. Not only was he a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and

engineer, but also one of the boldest speculators of the generation

which gave birth to Columbus, and was not less original and ingenious

than he was universally accomplished--an Admirable Crichton among

painters. There is a theory that this many-sidedness is a proof of the

greatest men, indicating a man who might have been great in any way,

who, had his destiny not found and left him a painter, would have been

equally great as a philosopher, a man of science, a poet, or a

statesman. It may be so; but the life of Lionardo tends also to

illustrate the disadvantage of too wide a grasp and diffusion of genius.

Beginning much and finishing little, not because he was idle or fickle,

but because his schemes were so colossal and his aims so high, he spent

his time in preparation for the attainment of perfect excellence, which

eluded him. Lionardo was the pioneer, the teacher of others, rather than

the complete fulfiller of his own dreams; and the life of the proud,

passionate man was, to him self mortification. This result might, in a

sense, have been avoided; but Lionardo, great as he was, proved also one

of those unfortunate men whose noblest efforts are met and marred by

calamities which could have hardly been foreseen or prevented.

Lionardo da Vinci was the son of a notary, and early showed a taste for

painting as well as for arithmetic and mathematics. He was apprenticed

to a painter, but he also sedulously studied physics. He is said,

indeed, to have made marvellous guesses at truth, in chemistry, botany,

astronomy, and particularly, as helping him in his art, anatomy. He was,

according to other accounts, a man of noble person, like Ghirlandajo.

And one can scarcely doubt this who looks at Lionardo's portrait painted

by himself, or at any engraving from it, and remarks the grand presence

of the man in his cap and furred cloak; his piercing wistful eyes;

stately outline of nose; and sensitive mouth, unshaded by his

magnificent flowing beard.

He was endowed with surprising bodily strength, and was skilled in the

knightly exercises of riding, fencing, and dancing. He was a lover of

social pleasure, and inclined to indulge in expensive habits. While a

lad he amused himself by inventing machines for swimming, diving, and

flying, as well as a compass, a hygrometer, etc. etc. In a combination

from the attributes of the toads, lizards, bats, etc. etc., with which

his studies in natural history had made him familiar, he painted a

nondescript monster, which he showed suddenly to his father, whom it

filled with horror. But the horror did not prevent the old lawyer

selling the wild phantasmagoria for a large sum of money. As something

beyond amusement, Lionardo planned a canal to unite Florence with Pisa

(while he executed other canals in the course of his life), and

suggested the daring but not impossible idea of raising _en masse_, by

means of levers, the old church of San Giovanni, Florence, till it

should stand several feet above its original level, and so get rid of

the half-sunken appearance which destroyed the effect of the fine old

building. He visited the most frequented places, carrying always with

him his sketch-book, in which to note down his observations; he followed

criminals to execution in order to witness the pangs of despair; he

invited peasants to his house and told them laughable stories, that he

might pick up from their faces the essence of comic expression.[4] A

mania for truth--alike in great and little things--possessed him.

Lionardo entered young into the service of the Gonzaga family of Milan,

being, according to one statement, chosen for the office which he was to

fill, as the first singer in _improvisatore_ of his time (among his

other inventions he devised a peculiar kind of lyre). He showed no want

of confidence in asserting his claims to be elected, for after declaring

the various works he would undertake, he added with regard to

painting--'I can do what can be done, as well as any man, be he who he

may.' He received from the Duke a salary of five hundred crowns a year.

He was fourteen years at the court of Milan, where, among other works,

he painted his 'Cenacolo,' or 'Last Supper,' one of the grandest

pictures ever produced. He painted it, contrary to the usual practice,

in oils upon the plastered walls of the refectory of the Dominican

convent, Milan. The situation was damp, and the material used proved so

unsuitable for work on plaster, that, even before it was exposed to the

reverses which in the course of a French occupation of Milan converted

the refectory into a stable, the colours had altogether faded, and the

very substance of the picture was crumbling into ruin.

The equestrian statue of the old Duke of Milan by Lionardo excited so

much delight in its first freshness, that it was carried in triumph

through the city, and during the progress it was accidentally broken.

Lionardo began another, but funds failed for its completion, and

afterwards the French used the original clay model as a target for their

bowmen.

Lionardo returned to Florence, and found his great rival, Michael

Angelo, already in the field. Both of the men, conscious of mighty

gifts, were intolerant of rivalry. To Lionardo especially, as being much

the elder man, the originator and promoter of many of the new views in

art which his opponent had adopted, the competition was very

distasteful, and to Michael Angelo he used the bitter sarcasm which has

been handed down to us, 'I was famous before you were born.'

Nevertheless Lionardo consented to compete with Michael Angelo for the

painting in fresco of one side of the council-hall, by the order of the

gonfaloniere for the year. Lionardo chose for his subject a victory of

the Florentines over the Milanese, while Michael Angelo took a scene

from the Pisan campaigns. Not only was the work never done (some say

partly because Lionardo _would_ delay in order to make experiments in

oils) on account of political troubles, but the very cartoons of the two

masters, which all the artists of the day flocked to see, have been

broken up, dispersed, and lost; and of one only, that of Michael Angelo,

a small copy remains, while but a fragment from Lionardo's was preserved

in a copy made by Rubens.

Lionardo went to Rome in the pontificate of Leo X., but there his

quarrel with Michael Angelo broke out more violently than ever. The Pope

too, who loved better a gentler, more accommodating spirit, seemed to

slight Lionardo, and the great painter not only quitted Rome in disgust,

but withdrew his services altogether from ungrateful Italy.

At Pavia Lionardo was presented to Francis I, of France, who, zealous

in patronizing art, engaged the painter to follow Francis's fortunes at

a salary of seven hundred crowns a year. Lionardo spent the remainder of

his life in France. His health had long been declining before he died,

aged sixty-seven years, at Cloux, near Amboise. He had risen high in the

favour of Francis. From this circumstance, and the generous, chivalrous

nature of the king, there doubtless arose the tradition that Francis

visited Lionardo on his death-bed; and that, while in the act of gently

assisting him to raise himself, the painter died in the king's arms.

Court chronicles do their best to demolish this story, by proving

Francis to have been at St Germain on the day when Lionardo died at

Cloux.

Lionardo was never married, and he left what worldly goods he possessed

to a favourite scholar. Besides his greater works, he filled many MS.

volumes, some with singularly accurate studies and sketches, maps, plans

for machines, scores for music (three volumes of these are in the Royal

Library at Windsor), and some with writing, which is written--probably

to serve as a sort of cipher--from right to left, instead of from left

to right. One of his writings is a valuable 'Treatise' on painting;

other writings are on scientific and philosophic subjects, and in these

Lionardo is believed to have anticipated some of the discoveries which

were reached by lines of close reasoning centuries later.

Lionardo's genius as a painter was expressed by his uniting, in the very

highest degree, truth and imagination. He was the shrewdest observer of

ordinary life, and he could also realize the higher mysteries and

profounder feelings of human nature. He drew exceedingly well. Of

transparent lights and shadows, or chiaroscuro, he was the greatest

master; but he was not a good colourist. His works are very rare, and

many which are attributed to him are the pictures of his scholars, for

he founded one of the great schools of Milan or Lombardy. There is a

tradition that he was, as Holbein was once believed to be, ambidextrous,

or capable of using his left hand as well as his right, and that he

painted with two brushes--one in each hand. Thus more than fully armed,

Lionardo da Vinci looms out on us like a Titan through the mists of

centuries, and he preaches to us the simple homily, that not even a

Titan can command worldly success; that such men must look to ends as

the reward of their travail, and before undertaking it they must count

the cost, and be prepared to renounce the luxurious tastes which clung

to Lionardo, and which were not for him or for such men as he was.

Lionardo's great painting was his 'Last Supper,' of which, happily, good

copies exist, as well as the wreck of the picture itself. The original

is now, after it is too late, carefully guarded and protected in its old

place in the Dominican convent of the Madonna della Grazia, Milan. The

assembled company sit at a long table, Christ being seated in the

middle, the disciples forming two separate groups on each side of the

Saviour. The gradations of age are preserved, from the tender youth of

John to the grey hairs of Simon; and all the varied emotions of mind,

from the deepest sorrow and anxiety to the eager desire of revenge, are

here portrayed. The well-known words of Christ, 'One of you shall betray

me,' have caused the liveliest emotion. The two groups to the left of

Christ are full of impassioned excitement, the figures in the first

turning to the Saviour, those in the second speaking to each

other,--horror, astonishment, suspicion, doubt, alternating in the

various expressions. On the other hand, stillness, low whispers,

indirect observations, are the prevailing expressions in the groups on

the right. In the middle of the first group sits the betrayer; a

cunning, sharp profile, he looks up hastily to Christ, as if speaking

the words, 'Master, is it I?' while, true to the Scriptural account, his

left hand and Christ's right hand approach, as if unconsciously, the

dish that stands before them.[5]

A sketch of the head of Christ for the original picture, which has been

preserved on a torn and soiled piece of paper at Brera, expresses the

most elevated seriousness, together with Divine gentleness pain on

account of the faithless disciple, a full presentiment of his own death,

and resignation to the will of the Father. It gives a faint idea of what

the master may have accomplished in the finished picture.

During his stay at Florence Lionardo painted a portrait of that Ginevra

Benci already mentioned as painted by Ghirlandajo; and a still more

famous portrait by Lionardo was that of Mona Lisa, the wife of his

friend Giocondo. This picture is also known as 'La Jaconde.' I wish to

call attention to it because it is the first of four surpassingly

beautiful portraits of women which four great painters gave in

succession to the world. The others, to be spoken of afterwards, are

Raphael's 'Fornarina,' Titian's 'Bella Donna,' and Rubens' 'Straw Hat.'

About the original of 'La Jaconde' there never has been a mystery such

as there has been about the others. At this portrait the unsatisfied

painter worked at intervals for four years, and when he left it he

pronounced it still unfinished. 'La Jaconde' is now in the Louvre in

nearly ruined condition, yet a judge says of it that even now 'there is

something in this wonderful head of the ripest southern beauty, with its

airy background of a rocky landscape, which exercises a peculiar

fascination over the mind.'

There is a painting of the Madonna and Child Christ said to be by

Lionardo, and probably, at least, by one of his school, and which

belongs, I think, to the Duke of Buccleuch, and was exhibited lately

among the works of the old masters. The group has at once something

touching and exalted in its treatment. The Divine Child in the Mother's

arms is strangely attracted by the sight of a cross, and turns towards

it with ineffable longing, while the Virgin Mother, with a pang of

foreboding, clasping the child in her arms, seeks to draw him back.

The fragment of the cartoon in which Lionardo competed with Michael

Angelo, may be held to survive in the fine painting by Rubens called

'the Battle of the Standard.' Of a famous Madonna and St Anne, by

Lionardo, the original cartoon in black chalk is preserved under glass

in our Royal Academy.[6]

Michael Angelo Buonarroti, born at Castel Caprese near Tuscany, 1475, is

the next of these universal geniuses, a term which we are accustomed to

hold in contempt, because we have only seen it exemplified in parody.

After Lionardo, indeed, Michael Angelo, though he was also painter,

sculptor, architect, engineer, poet, musician, might almost be regarded

as restricted in his pursuits, yet still so manifold was he, that men

have loved to make a play upon his name and call him 'Michael the

angel,' and to speak of him as of a king among men.

Michael Angelo was of noble descent, and though his ancient house had

fallen into comparative poverty, his father was mayor or podesta of

Chiusi, and governor of the castle of Chiusi and Caprese. Michael Angelo

was destined for the profession of the law, but so early vindicated his

taste for art, that at the age of thirteen years he was apprenticed to

Ghirlandajo. Lorenzo the Magnificent was then ruling Florence, and he

had made a collection of antique models in his palace and gardens, and

constituted it an academy for young artists. In this academy Michael

Angelo developed a strong bias for sculpture, and won the direct

patronage of the Medici.

To this period of his life belong two characteristic anecdotes. In a

struggle with a fellow-student, Michael Angelo received a blow from a

mallet in his face, which, breaking bone and cartilage, lent to his nose

the rugged bend,

'The bar of Michael Angelo.'

An ill-advised member of the Medician house, while entertaining a party

of guests during a snowstorm, sent out the indignant artist to make a

snow man within sight of the palace windows. These anecdotes bear

indirectly on the ruling qualities of Michael Angelo--qualities so

integral that they are wrought into his marble and painted on his

canvas--proud independence and energy.

Before going farther I wish to guard against a common misapprehension of

Michael Angelo--that he was a haughty, arrogant man, absolutely narrow

in his half-idolatrous, half-human worship of art. Michael Angelo was

severe in place of being sweet; he was impatient of contradiction; he

was careless and scornful of ceremony; and in his very wrath at flattery

and hypocrisy, he was liable to sin against his own honesty and

sincerity. But he was a man with a lofty sense of duty and a profound

reverence for God. He was, unlike Lionardo, consistently simple, frugal,

and temperate, throughout his long life. If he held up a high standard

to others, and enforced it on them with hardness, he held up a higher

standard to himself, and enforced it on himself more hardly still. He

was a thoroughly unworldly man, and actions which had their root in

unworldliness have been ascribed unjustly to a kind of Lucifer pride.

Greed, and the meanness of greed, were unknown to him. He worked for the

last ten years of his life (under no less than five different Popes) at

his designs for St Peter's, steadfastly refusing pay for the work,

saying that he did it for the honour of God and his own honour. He made

many enemies and suffered from their enmity, but I cannot learn that,

except in one instance, he was guilty of dealing an unworthy blow at

his opponents. He was generous to his scholars, and without jealousy of

them, suffering them to use his designs for their own purposes. He said,

'I have no friends, I need none, I wish for none;' but that was in

feeling himself 'alone before Heaven;' and of the friends whom he did

possess, he loved them all the more devotedly and faithfully, because

they were few in number.

One need only be told of his love for his old servant Urbino, whom he

presented with two thousand crowns to render him independent of service;

and when the servant was seized with his last illness Michael Angelo

nursed him tenderly, sleeping in his clothes on a couch that he might be

ready to attend his patient. When his cares were ended, Michael Angelo

wrote to a correspondent--'My Urbino is dead--to my infinite grief and

sorrow. Living, he served me truly; and in his death he taught me how to

die. Of Michael Angelo's more equal friendship with Vittoria Colonna I

hope my readers will read at leisure for themselves. No nobler, truer

friendship ever existed. It began when the high-born and beautiful,

gifted, and devout Marchesa de Pescara--most loyal of wives and widows,

was forty-eight, and Michael Angelo sixty-four years of age. After a few

years of privileged intercourse and correspondence, which were the

happiest years in Michael Angelo's life, it ended for this world when he

stood mourning by her lifeless clay. 'I was born a rough model, and it

was for thee to reform and re-make me,' the great painter had written

humbly of himself to his liege lady.[7]

Italy, in Michael Angelo's time, as Germany in Albert Dürer's, was all

quickened and astir with the new wave of religious thought which brought

about the Reformation. Ochino and Peter Martyr, treading in the

footsteps of Savonarola, had preached to eager listeners, but 'in Italy

men did not adopt Lutheranism, though they approached it;' and in all

the crowd of great Italian artists of the day, Michael Angelo shows

deepest traces of the conflict--of its trouble, its seriousness, its

nobleness. He only, among his brethren, acted out his belief that the

things of the world sank into insignificance before those thoughts of

God and immortality which were alone fully worthy of the soul. And it

was, as to a religious work for which he was fitted, that he at last

gave himself up to the raising of St Peter's. We shall have next in

order the life of a man who had all the winning qualities which Michael

Angelo wanted, but we shall hardly, through the whole range of history,

find a nobler man than Michael Angelo.

After his first visit to Rome, 1496, Michael Angelo executed his

colossal statue of David. In 1503 he entered into the competition with

Lionardo for the painting of one end of the Council-hall, in Florence,

which has been already mentioned. For this object he drew as his

cartoon, 'Pisan soldiers surprised while bathing by a sudden trumpet

call to arms.' The grand cartoon, of which only a small copy exists, was

said to have been torn to pieces as an act of revenge by a

fellow-sculptor, whom Michael Angelo had offended.

Michael Angelo was invited to Rome by Julius II. in 1504 to aid in

erecting the unapproachable monument which the Pope projected raising

for himself. Then commenced a series of contentions and struggles

between the imperious and petulant Pope and the haughty, uncompromising

painter, in which the latter certainly had the best of it. At one time

in the course of the quarrel, Michael Angelo departed from Rome without

permission or apology, and stoutly refused to return, though followed

hotly by no less than five different couriers, armed with threats and

promises, and urged to make the reparation by his own gonfaloniere. At

last a meeting and a reconciliation between Michael Angelo and the Pope

were effected at Bologna. Michael Angelo designed for Pope Julius II,

not only the statue of Pope Julius at Bologna, which was finally

converted into a cannon, and turned against the very man whose effigy it

had originally presented, but also for that tomb which was never

completed, the famous figure of Moses seated, grasping his beard with

one hand.

While employed at the tomb, Michael Angelo, then in his fortieth year,

was desired by the Pope to undertake the decoration of the ceiling of

the Sistine Chapel. Here, again, the hand of an enemy is said to have

been at work. Michael Angelo, with the first place as a sculptor, was

inexperienced in fresco painting; while Raphael, who was taking the

place of Lionardo as Michael Angelo's most formidable rival (yet whom it

is said Michael Angelo pointed out as the fittest painter of the

ceiling), and who was then engaged in painting the Vatican chambers, had

already achieved the utmost renown. It was anticipated by secret

hostility, so records tradition, that Michael Angelo would fail signally

in the unaccustomed work, and that his merit as an artist would pale

altogether before that of Raphael's. I need hardly write how entirely

malice was balked in the verdict to which posterity has set its seal.

Michael Angelo brought artists from Florence to help him in his great

undertaking, for over the chapel, whose walls had already been painted

by older artists--among them Ghirlandajo, was an enormous vault of 150

feet in length by 50 in breadth, which Michael Angelo was required to

cover with designs representing the Fall and Redemption of Man. But the

painter was unable to bear what seemed to him the bungling attempts of

his assistants; so dismissing them all and destroying their work, he

shut himself up, and working in solitude and secrecy, set himself to

evolve from his own inner consciousness the gigantic scenes of a

tremendous drama. In 22 months (or, as Kugler holds, in three years,

including the time spent on the designs) he finished gloriously the

work, the magnitude of which one must see to comprehend. On All Saints'

Day, 1512, the ceiling was uncovered, and Michael Angelo was hailed,

little though he cared for such clamorous hailing, as a painter indeed.

For this piece of work Michael Angelo received 3000 crowns.

Pope Julius died, and was succeeded by Leo X. of the Medician house,

but, in spite of early associations as well as of mother country,

Michael Angelo was no more acceptable to the Pope--a brilliantly

polished, easy-tempered man of the world, who filled the chair of St

Peter's, than Lionardo had been. Leo X, greatly preferred Raphael, to

whom all manner of pleasantness as well as of courteous deference was

natural, to the two others. At the same time, Leo employed Michael

Angelo, though it was more as an architect than as a painter, and rather

at Florence than at Rome. At Florence Michael Angelo executed for Pope

Clement VII., another Medici, the mortuary chapel of San Lorenzo, with

its six great statues, those of the cousins Lorenzo de Medici and

Giuliano de Medici, the first called by the Florentines 'Il Pensièro,'

or 'Pensive Thought,' with the four colossal recumbent figures named

respectively the Night, the Morning, the Dawn, and the Twilight.

In 1537 Michael Angelo was employed by his fellow citizens to fortify

his native city against the return of his old patrons the Medici, and

the city held out for nine months.

Pope Paul III., an old man when elected to the popedom, but bent on

signalizing his pontificate with as splendid works of art as those

which had rendered the reigns of his predecessors illustrious, summoned

another man, grown elderly, Michael Angelo, upwards of sixty years,

reluctant to accept the commission, to finish the decoration of the

Sistine Chapel; and Michael Angelo painted on the wall, at the upper

end, his painting, 'The Last Judgment.' The picture is forty-seven feet

high by forty-three wide, and it occupied the painter eight years. It

was during its progress that Michael Angelo entered on his friendship

with Vittoria Colonna.

For the chapel called the Paolina or Pauline Chapel Michael Angelo also

painted less-known frescoes, but from that time he devoted his life to

St Peter's. He had said that he would take the old Pantheon and 'suspend

it in air,' and he did what he said, though he did not live to see the

great cathedral completed. His sovereign, the Grand Duke of Florence,

endeavoured in vain with magnificent offers to lure the painter back to

his native city. Michael Angelo protested that to leave Rome then would

be 'a sin and a shame, and the ruin of the greatest religious monument

in Christian Europe.' Michael Angelo, like Lionardo, did not marry; he

died at Rome in 1563, in his eighty-ninth year.

His nephew and principal heir,[8] by the orders of the Grand Duke of

Florence, and it is believed according to Michael Angelo's own wish,

removed the painter's body to Florence, where it was buried with all

honours in the church of Santa Croce there.

The traits which recall Michael Angelo personally to us, are the

prominent arch of the nose, the shaggy brows, the tangled beard, the

gaunt grandeur of a figure like that of one of his prophets.

While Michael Angelo lived, one Pope rose on his approach, and seated

the painter on his right hand, and another Pope declined to sit down in

his painter's presence; but the reason given for the last condescension,

is that the Pope feared that the painter would follow his example. And

if the Grand Duke Cosmo uncovered before Michael Angelo, and stood hat

in hand while speaking to him, we may have the explanation in another

assertion, that 'sovereigns asked Michael Angelo to put on his cap,

because the painter would do it unasked.'

The solitary instance in which Michael Angelo is represented as taking

an unfair advantage of an antagonist, is in connection with the

painter's rivalry in his art with Raphael. Michael Angelo undervalued

the genius of Raphael, and was disgusted by what the older man

considered the immoderate admiration bestowed on the younger. A

favourite pupil of Michael Angelo's was Sebastian Del Piombo, who being

a Venetian by birth was an excellent colourist. For one of his

pictures--the very 'Raising of Lazarus' now in the National Gallery,

which the Pope had ordered at the same time that he had ordered

Raphael's 'Transfiguration'--it is rumoured that Michael Angelo gave the

designs and even drew the figures, leaving Sebastian the credit, and

trusting that without Michael Angelo's name appearing in the work, by

the help of his drawing in addition to Sebastian's superb colouring,

Raphael would be eclipsed, and that by a painter comparatively obscure.

The unwarrantable inference that the whole work was that of one painter,

constituted a stratagem altogether unworthy of Michael Angelo, and if it

had any existence, its getting wind disappointed and foiled its authors.

When the story was repeated to Raphael, his sole protest is said to have

been to the effect that he was glad that Michael Angelo esteemed him so

highly as to enter the lists with him.

We can judge of Michael Angelo's attainments as a poet, even without

having recourse to the original Italian, by Wordsworth's translations of

some of the Italian master's sonnets, and by Mr John Edward Taylor's

translations of selections from Michael Angelo's poems.

Michael Angelo was greater as an architect and a sculptor than as a

painter, because his power and delight lay in the mastery of form, and

in the assertion, through that mastery, of the idealism of genius. It is

not necessary to speak here of the mighty harmonies and the ineffable

dignity of simplicity, somewhat marred by the departure from Michael

Angelo's designs, in St Peter's. It has been the fashion to praise them

to the skies, and it has been a later fashion to decry them, in awarding

a preference to the solemn shades and the dim rich dreaminess of Gothic

architecture. Both fashions come to this, after all, that beauty, like

these great men of genius of old, is many-sided.

In Michael Angelo's works of sculpture a weird charm attaches to his

monuments in honour of the Medici in the chapel of San Lorenzo,

Florence. Perhaps something of this weirdness has to do with the tragic

history of the men, and with a certain mystery which has always shrouded

the sculptor's meaning in these monuments.

Mrs Jameson quotes an account of Michael Angelo at work. An eye-witness

has left us a very graphic description of the energy with which, even in

old age, Michael Angelo handled his chisel:--"I can say that I have

seen Michael Angelo at the age of sixty, and, with a body announcing

weakness, make more chips of marble fly about in a quarter of an hour

than would three of the strongest young sculptors in an hour,--a thing

almost incredible to him who has not beheld it. He went to work with

such impetuosity and fury of manner, that I feared almost every moment

to see the block split into pieces. It would seem as if, inflamed by the

idea of greatness which inspired him, this great man attacked with a

Vigenére."

In painting Michael Angelo regarded colouring as of secondary

importance. He is not known to have executed one painting in oil, and he

treated oil and easel-painting generally as work only fit for women or

idle men. While he approached the sublime in his painting, it was by no

means faultless. Even in form his efforts were apt to tend to heaviness

and exaggeration, and the fascination which robust muscular delineation

had for him, betrayed him into materialism. Fuseli's criticism of

Michael Angelo's work, that Michael Angelo's women were female men, and

his children diminutive giants, is judged correct. Incomparably the

greatest painting of Michael Angelo's is his ceiling of the Sistine

Chapel. It includes upwards of 200 figures, the greater part colossal,

as they were to be looked at, in the distance, from below.

'The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel contains the most perfect

works done by Michael Angelo in his long and active life. Here

his great spirit appears in noblest dignity, in its highest

purity; here the attention is not disturbed by that arbitrary

display to which his great power not unfrequently seduced him in

other works. The ceiling forms a flattened arch in its section;

the central portion, which is a plain surface, contains a series

of large and small pictures, representing the most important

events recorded in the book of Genesis--the Creation and Fall of

Man, with its immediate consequences. In the large triangular

compartments at the springing of the vault are sitting figures

of the Prophets and Sibyls, as the foretellers of the coming

Saviour. In the soffits of the recesses between these

compartments, and in the arches underneath, immediately above

the windows, are the ancestors of the Virgin, the series leading

the mind directly to the Saviour. The external of these numerous

representations is formed by an architectural frame-work of

peculiar composition, which encloses the single subjects, tends

to make the principal masses conspicuous, and gives to the whole

an appearance of that solidity and support so necessary, but so

seldom attended to in soffit decorations, which may be

considered as if suspended. A great number of figures are also

connected with the frame-work; those in unimportant situations

are executed in the colour of stone or bronze; in the more

important, in natural colours. These serve to support the

architectural forms, to fill up and to connect the whole. They

may be best described as the living and embodied _genii_ of

architecture. It required the unlimited power of an architect,

sculptor, and painter, to conceive a structural whole of so much

grandeur, to design the decorative figures with the significant

repose required by the sculpturesque character, and yet to

preserve their subordination to the principal subjects, and to

keep the latter in the proportions and relations best adapted to

the space to be filled.'--_Kugler_.

The pictures from the Old Testament, beginning from the altar, are:--

1. The Separation of Light and Darkness.

2. The Creation of the Sun and Moon.

3. The Creation of Trees and Plants.

4. The Creation of Adam.

5. The Creation of Eve.

6. The Fall and the Expulsion from Paradise.

7. The Sacrifice of Noah.

8. The Deluge.

9. The Intoxication of Noah.

'The scenes from Genesis are the most sublime representations of

these subjects;--the Creating Spirit is unveiled before us. The

peculiar type which the painter has here given of the form of the

Almighty

Father has been frequently imitated by his followers, and even by

Raphael, but has been surpassed by none. Michael Angelo has

represented him in majestic flight, sweeping through the air,

surrounded by _genii_, partly supporting, partly borne along with

him, covered by his floating drapery; they are the distinct

syllables, the separate virtues of his creating word. In the

first (large) compartment we see him with extended hands,

assigning to the sun and moon their respective paths. In the

second, he awakens the first man to life. Adam lies stretched on

the verge of the earth in the act of raising himself; the Creator

touches him with the point of his finger, and appears thus to

endow him with feeling and life. This picture displays a

wonderful depth of thought in the composition, and the utmost

elevation and majesty in the general treatment and execution. The

third subject is not less important, representing the Fall of

Man, and his Expulsion from Paradise. The tree of knowledge

stands in the midst; the serpent (the upper part of the body

being that of a woman) is twined around the

stem; she bends down towards the guilty pair, who are in the act

of plucking the forbidden fruit. The figures are nobly graceful,

particularly that of Eve. Close to the serpent hovers the angel

with the sword, ready to drive the fallen beings out of Paradise.

In this double action, this union of two separate moments, there

is something peculiarly poetic and significant: it is guilt and

punishment in one picture. The sudden and lightning-like

appearance of the avenging angel behind the demon of darkness has

a most impressive effect.'--_Kugler_.

The lower portion of the ceiling is divided into triangles, occupied by

the Prophets and Sibyls in solemn contemplation, accompanied by angels

and genii. Beginning from the left of the entrance their order is--

1. Joel.

2. Sibylla Erythræa.

3. Ezekiel.

4. Sibylla Persica.

5. Jonah.

6. Sibylla Libyca.

7. Daniel.

8. Sibylla Cumæa.

9. Isaiah.

10. Sibylla Delphica.

'The prophets and sibyls in the triangular compartments of the

curved portion of the ceiling are the largest figures in the

whole work; these, too, are among the most wonderful forms that

modern art has called into life. They are all represented

seated, employed with books or rolled manuscripts; genii stand

near or behind them. These mighty beings sit before us pensive,

meditative, inquiring, or looking upwards with inspired

countenances. Their forms and movements, indicated by the grand

lines and masses of the drapery, are majestic and dignified. We

see in them beings, who, while they feel and bear the sorrows of

a corrupt and sinful world, have power to look for consolation

into the secrets of the future. Yet the greatest variety

prevails in the attitudes and expression: each figure is full of

individuality. Zacharias is an aged man, busied in calm and

circumspect investigation; Jeremiah is bowed down, absorbed in

thought, the thought of deep and bitter grief; Ezekiel turns

with hasty movements to the genius next to him, who points

upwards with joyful expectation, etc. The sibyls are equally

characteristic: the Persian, a lofty, majestic woman, very aged;

the Erythræan, full of power, like the warrior goddess of

wisdom; the Delphic, like Cassandra, youthfully soft and

graceful, but with strength to bear the awful seriousness of

revelation.'--_Kugler_.

'The belief of the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the

sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed

by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century,

beginning with the verse--

"Dies iræ, dies illa,

Solvet sæclum in favilla

Teste David cum Sibylla."

It may be inferred that this hymn, admitted into the liturgy of

the Roman Church, gave sanction to the adoption of the sibyls

into Christian art. They are seen from this time accompanying the

prophets and apostles, in the cyclical decorations of the

church.... But the highest honour that art has rendered to the

sibyls has been by the hand of Michael Angelo,

on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Here in the conception of a

mysterious order of women, placed above and without all

considerations of the graceful or the individual, the great

master was peculiarly in his element. They exactly fitted his

standard, of art, not always sympathetic, nor comprehensible to

the average human mind, of which the grand in form and the

abstract in expression were the first and last conditions. In

this respect, the sibyls on the Sistine Chapel ceiling are more

Michael Angelesque than their companions the prophets. For these,

while types of the highest monumental treatment, are yet men,

while the sibyls belong to a distinct class of beings, who convey

the impression of the very obscurity in which their history is

wrapt--creatures who have lived far from the abodes of men, who

are alike devoid of the expression of feminine sweetness, human

sympathy, or sacramental beauty; who are neither Christians nor

Jewesses, Witches nor Graces, yet living, grand, beautiful, and

true, according to laws revealed to the great Florentine genius

only.

Thus their figures may be said to be unique, as the offspring of

a peculiar sympathy between the master's mind and his subject. To

this sympathy may be ascribed the prominence and size given them,

both prophets and sibyls, as compared to their usual relation to

the subjects they environ. They sit here on twelve throne-like

niches, more like presiding deities, each wrapt in

self-contemplation, than as tributary witnesses to the truth and

omnipotence of Him they are intended to announce. Thus they form

a gigantic frame-work round the subjects of the Creation, of

which the birth of Eve, as the type of the Nativity, is the

intentional centre. For some reason, the twelve figures are not

prophets and sibyls alternately--there being only five sibyls to

seven prophets,--so that the prophets come together at one angle.

Books and scrolls are given indiscriminately to them.

'The Sibylla Persica, supposed to be the oldest of the sisterhood, holds

the book close to her eyes, as if from dimness of sight, which fact,

contradicted as it is by a frame of obviously Herculean strength, gives

a mysterious intentness to the action.

'The Sibylla Libyca, of equally powerful proportions, but less closely

draped, is grandly wringing herself to lift a massive volume from a

height above her head on to her knees.

'The Sibylla Cumana, also aged, and with her head covered, is reading

with her volume at a distance from her eyes.

'The Sibylla Delphica, with waving hair escaping from her turban, is a

beautiful young being, the most human of all, gazing into vacancy or

futurity. She holds a scroll.

'The Sibylla Erythræa, grand, bare-headed creature, sits reading

intently with crossed legs, about to turn over her book.

'The prophets are equally grand in structure, and though, as we have

said, not more than men, yet they are the only men that could well bear

the juxtaposition with their stupendous female colleagues. Ezekiel,

between Erythræa and Persica, has a scroll in his hand that hangs by his

side, just cast down, as he turns eagerly to listen to some voice.

'Jeremiah, a magnificent figure, with elbow on knee and head on hand,

wrapt in meditation appropriate to one called to utter lamentation and

woe. He has neither book nor scroll.

'Jonah is also without either. His position is strained and ungraceful,

looking upwards, and apparently remonstrating with the Almighty upon the

destruction of the gourd, a few leaves of which are seen above him. His

hands are placed together with a strange and trivial action, supposed to

denote the counting on his fingers the number of days he was in the

fish's belly. A formless marine monster is seen at his side.

'Daniel has a book on his lap, with one hand on it. He is young, and a

piece of lion's skin seems to allude to his history.'[9]

In the recesses between the prophets and sibyls are a series of lovely

family groups, representing the genealogy of the Virgin, and expressive

of calm expectation of the future. The four corners of the ceiling

contain groups illustrative of the power of the Lord displayed in the

especial deliverances of his chosen people. Near the altar are:

Right, The Deliverance of the Israelites by the Brazen Serpent.

Left, The Execution of Haman.

Near the entrance are:

Right, Judith and Holofernes.

Left, David and Goliath.[10]

Michael Angelo was thirty-nine years of age when he painted the ceiling

of the Sistine. When he began to paint the 'Day of Judgment' he was

above sixty years of age, and his great rival, Raphael, had already been

dead thirteen years.

The picture of the 'Day of Judgment,' with much that renders it

marvellous and awful, has a certain coarseness of conception and

execution. The moment chosen is that in which the Lord says, 'Depart

from me, ye cursed,' and the idea and even attributes of the principal

figure are taken from Orcagna's old painting in the Campo Santo. But

with all Michael Angelo's advantages, he has by no means improved on the

original idea. He has robbed the figure of the Lord of its transcendant

majesty; he has not been able to impart to the ranks of the blessed the

look of blessedness which 'Il Beato' himself might have conveyed. The

chief excellence of the picture is in the ranks of the condemned, who

writhe and rebel against their agonies. No wonder that the picture is

sombre and dreadful.

Of the allegorical figures of 'Night' and 'Morning' in the chapel of San

Lorenzo, there are casts at the Crystal Palace.

A comparison and a contrast have been instituted between Michael Angelo

and Milton, and Raphael and Shakespeare. There may be something in them,

but, as in the case of broken metaphors, they will not bear being pushed

to a logical conclusion or picked to pieces. The very transparent

comparison which matches Michael Angelo with his own countryman, Dante,

is after all more felicitous and truer. Michael Angelo with Lionardo are

the great chiefs of the Florentine School.

Raphael Sanzio, or Santi of Urbino, the head of the Roman School, was

one of those very exceptional men who seem born to happiness, to inspire

love and only love, to pass through the world making friends and

disarming enemies, who are fully armed to confer pleasure while almost

incapable of either inflicting or receiving pain. To this day his

exceptional fortune stands Raphael's memory in good stead, since for one

man or woman who yearns after the austere righteousness and priceless

tenderness of Michael Angelo, there are ten who yield with all their

hearts to the gay, sweet gentleness and generosity of Raphael. No doubt

it was also in his favour as a painter, that though a man of highly

cultivated tastes, 'in close intimacy and correspondence with most of

the celebrated men of his time, and interested in all that was going

forward,' he did not, especially in his youth, spend his strength on a

variety of studies, but devoted himself to painting. While he thus

vindicated his share of the breadth of genius of his country and time,

by giving to the world the loveliest Madonnas and Child-Christs, the

most dramatic of battle-pieces, the finest of portraits, his noble and

graceful fertility of invention and matchless skill of execution were

confined to and concentrated on painting. He did not diverge long or far

into the sister arts of architecture and sculpture, though his classic

researches in the excavations of Rome were keen and zealous; a heap of

ruins having given to the world in 1504 the group of the

that a writer of his day could record that 'Raphael had sought and found

in Rome another Rome.'

Raphael was born in the town of Urbino, and was the son of a painter of

the Umbrian School, who very early destined the boy to his future

career, and promoted his destination by all the efforts in Giovanni

Santi's power, including the intention of sending away and apprenticing

the little lad to the best master of his time, Perugino, so called from

the town where he resided, Perugia. Raphael's mother died when he was

only eight years of age, and his father died when he was no more than

eleven years, before the plans for his education were put into action.

But no stroke of outward calamity, or loss--however severe, could annul

Raphael's birthright of universal favour. His step-mother, the uncles

who were his guardians, his clever, perverse, unscrupulous master, all

joined in a common love of Raphael and determination to promote his

interests.

Raphael at the age of twelve years went to Perugia to work under

Perugino, and remained with his master till he was nearly twenty years

of age. In that interval he painted industriously, making constant

progress, always in the somewhat hard, but finished, style of Perugino,

while already showing a predilection for what was to prove Raphael's

favourite subject, the Madonna and Child. At this period he painted his

famous _Lo Sposalizio_ or the 'Espousals,' the marriage of the Virgin

Mary with Joseph, now at Milan. In 1504 he visited Florence, remaining

only for a short time, but making the acquaintance of Fra Bartolommeo

and Ghirlandajo, seeing the cartoons of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, and

from that time displaying a marked improvement in drawing. Indeed

nothing is more conspicuous in Raphael's genius in contra-distinction to

Michael Angelo's, than the receptive character of Raphael's mind, his

power of catching up an impression from without, and the candour and

humility with which he availed himself unhesitatingly of the assistance

lent him by others.

Returning soon to Florence, Raphael remained there till 1508, when he

was twenty-five years, drawing closer the valuable friendships he had

already formed, and advancing with rapid strides in his art, until his

renown was spread all over Italy, and with reason, since already, while

still young, he had painted his 'Madonna of the Goldfinch,' in the

Florentine Gallery, and his 'La Belle Jardinière,' or Madonna in a

garden among flowers, now in the Louvre.

In his twenty-fifth year Raphael was summoned to Rome to paint for Pope

Julius II. My readers will remember that Michael Angelo in the abrupt

severity of his prime of manhood, was soon to paint the ceiling of the

Sistine Chapel for the same despotic and art-loving Pope, who had

brought Raphael hardly more than a stripling to paint the '_Camere_' or

'_Stanze_' chambers of the Vatican.

The first of the halls which Raphael painted (though not the first in

order) is called the Camera della Segnatura (in English, signature), and

represents Theology, Poetry, Philosophy, with the Sciences, Arts, and

Jurisprudence. The second is the 'Stanza d'Eliodoro,' or the room of

Heliodorus, and contains the grandest painting of all, in the expulsion

of Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem (taken from Maccabees), the

Miracle of Bolsena, Attila, king of the Huns, terrified by the

apparition of St Peter and St Paul, and St Peter delivered from prison.

The third stanza painted by Raphael is the 'Stanza dell' Incendio' (the

conflagration), so called from the extinguishing of the fire in the

Borgo by a supposed miracle, being the most conspicuous scene in

representations of events taken from the lives of Popes Leo III, and

IV.; and the fourth chamber, which was left unfinished by Raphael, and

completed by his scholars, is the 'Sala di Constantino,' and contains

incidents from the life of the Emperor Constantine, including the

splendid battle-piece between Constantine and Maxentius. At these

chambers, or at the designs for them, during the popedoms of Julius II.,

who died in the course of the painting of the Camere, and Leo X., for a

period of twelve years, till Raphael's death in 1520, after which the

'Sala di Constantino' was completed by his scholars.

Raphael has also left in the Vatican a series of small pictures from the

Old Testament, known as Raphael's Bible. This series decorates the

thirteen cupolas of the 'Loggie,' or open galleries, running round three

sides of an open court. Another work undertaken by Raphael should have

still more interest for us. Leo X., resolving to substitute woven for

painted tapestry round the lower walls of the interior of the Sistine

Chapel, commanded Raphael to furnish drawings to the Flemish weavers,

and thence arose eleven cartoons, seven of which have been preserved,

have become the property of England, and are the glory of the Kensington

Museum. The subjects of the cartoons in the seven which have been saved,

are 'The Death of Ananias,' 'Elymas the Sorcerer struck with Blindness,'

'The Healing of the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,' 'The

Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' 'Paul and Barnabas at Lystra,' 'St Paul

Preaching at Athens,' and 'The Charge to St Peter.' The four cartoons

which are lost, were 'The Stoning of St Stephen,' 'The Conversion of St

Paul,' 'Paul in Prison,' and 'The Coronation of the Virgin.'

In those cartoons figures above life-size were drawn with chalk upon

strong paper, and coloured in distemper, and Raphael received for his

work four hundred and thirty gold ducats (about _£650_), while the

Flemish weavers received for their work in wools, silk, and gold, fifty

thousand gold ducats. The designs were cut up in strips for the

weavers' use, and while some strips were destroyed, the rest lay in a

warehouse at Arras, till Rubens became aware of their existence, and

advised Charles I, to buy the set, to be employed in the tapestry

manufactory established by James I. at Mortlake. Brought to this country

in the slips which the weavers had copied, the fate of the cartoons was

still precarious. Cromwell bought them in Charles I.'s art collection,

and Louis XIV, sought, but failed, to re-buy them. They fell into

farther neglect, and were well-nigh forgotten, when Sir Godfrey Kneller

recalled them to notice, and induced William III, to have the slips

pasted together, and stretched upon linen, and put in a room set apart

for them at Hampton Court, whence they were transferred, within the last

ten years, for the greater advantage of artists and the public, to

Kensington Museum.

The woven tapestries for which the cartoons were designed had quite as

chequered a career. In the two sacks of Rome by French soldiers, the

tapestries were seized, carried off, and two of them burnt for the

bullion in the thread. At last they were restored to the Vatican, where

they hang in their faded magnificence, a monument of Leo X, and of

Raphael. An additional set of ten tapestry cartoons were supplied to the

Vatican by Raphael's scholars.

Raphael painted for the Chigi family in their palace, which is now the

Villa Farnesina, scenes from the history of Cupid and Psyche, and the

Triumph of Galatea, subjects which show how the passion for classical

mythology that distinguishes the next generation, was beginning to work.

To these last years belong his 'Madonna di San Sisto,' so named from its

having been painted for the convent of St Sixtus at Piacenza, and his

last picture, the 'Transfiguration,' with which he was still engaged

when death met him unexpectedly.

Raphael, as the Italians say, lived more like a '_principe_' (prince)

than a '_pittore_' (painter). He had a house in Rome, and a villa in the

neighbourhood, and on his death left a considerable fortune to his

heirs. There has not been wanting a rumour that his life of a principe

was a dissipated and prodigal life; but this ugly rumour, even if it had

more evidence to support it, is abundantly disproven by the nature of

Raphael's work, and by the enormous amount of that work, granting him

the utmost assistance from his crowd of scholars. He had innumerable

commissions, and retained an immense school from all parts of Italy, the

members of which adored their master. Raphael had the additional

advantage of having many of his pictures well engraved by a contemporary

engraver named Raimondi.

Like Giotto, Raphael was the friend of the most distinguished Italians

of his day, including Count Castiglione, and the poet Ariosto. He was

notably the warm friend of his fellow-painters both at home and abroad,

with the exception of Michael Angelo. A drawing of his own, which

Raphael sent, in his kindly interchange of such sketches, to Albert

Dürer, is, I think, preserved at Nüremberg. The sovereign princes of

Italy, above all Leo X., were not contented with being munificent

patrons to Raphael, they treated him with the most marked consideration.

The Cardinal Bibbiena proposed the painter's marriage with his niece,

ensuring her a dowry of three thousand gold crowns, but Maria di

Bibbiena died young, ere the marriage could be accomplished; and

Raphael, who was said to be little disposed to the match, did not long

survive her. He caught cold, as some report, from his engrossing

personal superintendence of the Roman excavations; and, as others

declare, from his courtly assiduity in keeping an appointment with the

Pope, was attacked by fever, and died on his birth-day, April 6th, 1520,

having completed his thirty-seventh year.

All Rome and Italy mourned for him. When his body lay in state, to be

looked at and wept over by multitudes, his great unfinished picture of

the 'Transfiguration' was hung above the bed. He was buried in a spot

chosen by himself in his lifetime, and, as it happened, not far from the

resting-place of his promised bride. Doubts having been raised as to

Raphael's grave, search was made, and his body was exhumed in 1833, and

re-buried with great pomp. Raphael's life and that of Rubens form the

ideal painter's life--bountiful, splendid, unclouded, and terminating

ere it sees eclipse or decay--to all in whom the artistic temperament is

united to a genial, sensuous, pleasure-loving nature.

Raphael was not above the middle height, and slightly made. He was

sallow in colour, with brown eyes, and a full yet delicate mouth; but

his beautiful face, like that of our English Shakespeare, is familiar to

most of us. With regard to Raphael's face, the amount of womanliness in

it is a striking characteristic. One hears sometimes that no man's

character is complete without its share of womanliness: surely Raphael

had a double share, for womanliness is the most distinctive quality in

his face, along with that vague shade of pensiveness which we find not

infrequently, but strangely enough, in those faces which have been

associated with the happiest spirits and the brightest fortunes.

Raphael and his scholars painted and drew about nine hundred pictures

and sketches, including a hundred and twenty Madonnas, eight of which

are in private collections in England. Of Raphael's greatness, Kugler

writes that 'it is not so much in kind as in degree. No master left

behind _so many_ really excellent works as he, whose days were so early

numbered; in none has there been observed so little that is unpleasant.'

All authorities agree in ascribing much of Raphael's power to his purely

unselfish nature and aim. His excellence seems to lie in the nearly

perfect expression of material beauty and harmony, together with

grandeur of design and noble working out of thought. We shall see that

this devotion to material beauty has been made something of a reproach

to Raphael, as it certainly degenerated into a snare in the hands of his

followers, while unquestionably the universal appreciation of Raphael's

work, distinguished from the partial appreciation bestowed on the great

works of others, proceeds from this evident material beauty which is

open to all.

Then, again, Raphael, far more than Andrea del Sarto, deserved to be

called 'faultless;' and this general absence of defects and equality of

excellence is a great element of Raphael's wide popularity; for, as one

can observe for one's self, in regarding a work of art, there is always

a large proportion of the spectators who will seize on an error, dwell

on it, and be incapable of shaking off its influence, and rising into

the higher rank of critics, who discover and ponder over beauties. I

would have it considered also, that this equality of excellence does not

necessarily proceed always from a higher aim, but may arise rather from

an unconsciously lower aim.

The single reproach brought against Raphael as a painter is

that--according to some witnesses only, for most deny the

implication--Raphael so delighted in material beauty that he became

enslaved by it, till it diminished his spiritual insight. It is an

incontestable truth that in Raphael, as in all the great Italian

painters of his century, there was a falling away from the simple

earnestness, the exceeding reverence, the endless patience, the

self-abstraction, and self-devotion of the earliest Italian and Flemish

painters. Therefore there has been within the last fifty or sixty years

that movement in modern art, which is called Pre-raphaelitism, and which

is, in fact, a revolt against subjection to Raphael, and his supposed

undue exaltation of material beauty, and subjection of truth to

beauty--so called. But we must not fall into the grave mistake of

imagining that there was any want of vigour and variety in Raphael's

grace and tenderness, or that he could not in his greatest works rise

into a grandeur in keeping with his subject. Tire as we may of hearing

Raphael called the king of painters, as the Greeks tired of hearing

Aristides called 'the just,' this fact remains: no painter has left

behind him such a mass of surpassingly good work; in no other work is

there the same charm of greatest beauty and harmony.

It is hard for me to give you an idea in so short a space of Raphael's

work. I must content myself with quoting descriptions of two of his

Stanze, those of the Heliodorus and the Segnatura. 'Heliodorus driven

out of the Temple (2 Maccabees iii.). In the background Onias the

priest is represented praying for Divine interposition;--in the

foreground Heliodorus, pursued by two avenging angels, is endeavouring

to bear away the treasures of the temple. Amid the group on the left is

seen Julius II., in his chair of state, attended by his secretaries. One

of the bearers in front is Marc-Antonio Raimondi, the engraver of

Raphael's designs. The man with the inscription, "Jo Petro de Folicariis

Cremonen," was secretary of briefs to Pope Julius. Here you may fancy

you hear the thundering approach of the heavenly warrior, and the

neighing of his steed; while in the different groups who are plundering

the treasures of the temple, and in those who gaze intently on the

sudden consternation of Heliodorus, without being able to divine its

cause, we see the expression of terror, amazement, joy, humility, and

every passion to which human nature is exposed.'[11]

'The Stanza della Segnatura is so called from a judicial assembly once

held here. The frescoes in this chamber are illustrative of the Virtues

of Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, and Jurisprudence, who are represented

on the ceiling by Raphael, in the midst of arabesques by _Sodoma_. The

square pictures by Raphael refer:--the Fall of Man to Theology; the

Study of the Globe to Philosophy; the Flaying of Marsyas to Poetry; and

the Judgment of Solomon to Jurisprudence.

'_Entrance Wall_.--"The School of Athens." Raphael consulted Ariosto as

to the arrangement of its 52 figures. In the centre, on the steps of a

portico, are seen Plato and Aristotle, Plato pointing to heaven and

Aristotle to earth. On the left is Socrates conversing with his pupils,

amongst whom is a young warrior, probably Alcibiades. Lying upon the

steps in front is Diogenes. To his left, Pythagoras is writing on his

knee, and near him, with ink and pen, is Empedocles. The white mantle is

Francesco Maria della Rovere, nephew of Julius II. On the right is

Archimedes drawing a geometrical problem upon the floor. The young man

near him with uplifted hands is Federigo II., Duke of Mantua. Behind

these are Zoroaster, Ptolemy, one with a terrestrial, the other with a

celestial globe, addressing two figures, which represent Raphael and his

master Perugino. The drawing in brown upon the socle beneath this

fresco, is by _Pierino del Vaga_, and represents the death of

Archimedes.

'_Right Wall_.--"Parnassus." Apollo surrounded by the Muses; on his

right, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Below on the right, Sappho, supposed to

be addressing Corinna, Petrarch, Propertius, and Anacreon; on the left

Pindar and Horace, Sannazzaro, Boccaccio, and others. Beneath this, in

grisaille, are,--Alexander placing the poems of Homer in the tomb of

Achilles, and Augustus preventing the burning of Virgil's Æneid.

'_Left Wall_.--Above the window are Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance.

On the left, Justinian delivers the Pandects to Tribonian. On the right,

Gregory IX. (with the features of Julius II.) delivers the Decretals to

a jurist;--Cardinal de' Medici, afterwards Leo X., Cardinal Farnese,

afterwards Paul III., and Cardinal del Monte, are represented near the

Pope. In the socle beneath is Solon addressing the people of Athens.

'_Wall of Egress_.--"The Disputa." So called from an impression that it

represents a Dispute upon the Sacrament. In the upper part of the

composition the heavenly host are present; Christ between the Virgin and

St John the Baptist; on the left, St Peter, Adam, St John, David, St

Stephen, and another; and on the right, St Paul, Abraham, St James,

Moses, St Lawrence, and St George. Below is an altar surrounded by the

Latin fathers, Gregory, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. Near St

Augustine stand St Thomas Aquinas, St Anacletus, with the palm of a

martyr, and Cardinal Buenaventura reading. Those in front are Innocent

III., and in the background, Dante, near whom a monk in a black hood is

pointed out as Savonarola. The Dominican on the extreme left is supposed

to be Fra Angelico. The other figures are uncertain.' ...

'Raphael commenced his work in the Vatican by painting the ceiling and

the four walls in the room called _della Segnatura_, on the surface of

which he had to represent four great compositions, which embraced the

principal divisions of the encyclopedia of that period; namely,

Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, and Jurisprudence.

'It will be conceived, that to an artist imbued with the traditions of

the Umbrian School, the first of these subjects was an unparalleled

piece of good fortune: and Raphael, long familiar with the allegorical

treatment of religious compositions, turned it here to the most

admirable account; and, not content with the suggestions of his own

genius, he availed himself of all the instruction he could derive from

the intelligence of others. From these combined inspirations resulted,

to the eternal glory of the Catholic faith and of Christian art, a

composition without a rival in the history of painting, and, we may also

add, without a name; for to call it lyric or epic is not enough, unless,

indeed, we mean, by using these expressions, to compare it with the

allegorical epic of Dante, alone worthy to be ranked with this

marvellous production of the pencil of Raphael.

'Let no one consider this praise as idle and groundless, for it is

Raphael himself who forces the comparison upon us, by placing the figure

of Dante among the favourite sons of the Muses; and, what is still more

striking, by draping the allegorical figure of Theology in the very

colours in which Dante has represented Beatrice; namely, the white veil,

the red tunic, and the green mantle, while on her head he has placed the

olive crown.

'Of the four allegorical figures which occupy the compartments of the

ceiling, and which were all painted immediately after Raphael's arrival

in Rome, Theology and Poetry are incontestably the most remarkable. The

latter would be easily distinguished by the calm inspiration of her

glance, even were she without her wings, her starry crown, and her azure

robe, all having allusion to the elevated region towards which it is her

privilege to soar. The figure of Theology is quite as admirably suited

to the subject she personifies; she points to the upper part of the

grand composition, which takes its name from her, and in which the

artist has provided inexhaustible food for the sagacity and enthusiasm

of the spectator.

'This work consists of two grand divisions,--Heaven and Earth--which are

united to one another by that mystical bond, the Sacrament of the

Eucharist. The personages whom the Church has most honoured for learning

and holiness, are ranged in picturesque and animated groups on either

side of the altar, on which the consecrated wafer is exposed. St

Augustine dictates his thoughts to one of his disciples; St Gregory, in

his pontifical robes, seems absorbed in contemplation of celestial

glory; St Ambrose, in a slightly different attitude, appears to be

chanting the Te Deum; while St Jerome, seated, rests his hands on a

large book, which he holds on his knees. Pietro Lombardo, Duns Scotus,

St Thomas Aquinas, Pope Anacletus, St Buenaventura, and Innocent III.,

are no less happily characterized; while, behind all these illustrious

men, whom the Church and succeeding generations have agreed to honour,

Raphael has ventured to introduce Dante with his laurel crown, and, with

still greater boldness, the monk Savonarola, publicly burnt ten years

before as a heretic.

'In the glory, which forms the upper part of the picture, the Three

Persons of the Trinity are represented, surrounded by patriarchs,

apostles, and saints: it may, in fact, be considered in some sort as a

_resumé_ of all the favourite compositions produced during the last

hundred years by the Umbrian School. A great number of the types, and

particularly those of Christ and the Virgin, are to be found in the

earlier works of Raphael himself. The Umbrian artists, from having so

long exclusively employed themselves on mystical subjects, had certainly

attained to a marvellous perfection in the representation of celestial

beatitude, and of those ineffable things of which it has been said that

the heart of man cannot conceive them, far less, therefore, the pencil

of man portray; and Raphael, surpassing them in all, and even in this

instance, while surpassing himself, appears to have fixed the limits,

beyond which Christian art, properly so called, has never since been

able to advance.'[12]

Of Raphael's Madonnas, I should like to speak of three. The Madonna di

San Sisto: 'It represents the Virgin standing in a majestic attitude;

the infant Saviour _enthroned_ in her arms; and around her head a glory

of innumerable cherubs melting into light. Kneeling before her we see on

one side St Sixtus, on the other St Barbara, and beneath her feet two

heavenly cherubs gaze up in adoration. In execution, as in design, this

is probably the most perfect picture in the world. It is painted

throughout by Raphael's own hand; and as no sketch or study of any part

of it was ever known to exist, and as the execution must have been, from

the thinness and delicacy of the colours, wonderfully rapid, it is

supposed that he painted it at once on the canvas--a _creation_ rather

than a picture. In the beginning of the last century the Elector of

Saxony, Augustus III., purchased this picture from the monks of the

convent for the sum of sixty thousand florins (about £6000), and it now

forms the chief boast and ornament of the Dresden Gallery'[13]

The Madonna del Cardellino (our Lady of the Goldfinch): 'The Virgin is

sitting on a rock, in a flowery meadow. Behind are the usual light and

feathery trees, growing on the bank of a stream, which passes off to the

left in a rocky bend, and is crossed by a bridge of a single arch. To

the right, the opposite bank slopes upward in a gentle glade, across

which is a village, backed by two distant mountain-peaks.

'In front of the sitting matronly figure of the Virgin are the holy

children, our Lord and the Baptist, one on either side of her right

knee. She has been reading, and the approach of St John has caused her

to look off her book (which is open in her left hand) at the new comer,

which she does with a look of holy love and gentleness, at the same

time caressingly drawing him to her with her right hand, which touches

his little body under the right arm. In both hands, which rest across

the Virgin's knee, he holds a captive goldfinch, which he has brought,

with childish glee, as an offering to the Holy Child. The infant Jesus,

standing between his mother's knees, with one foot placed on her foot,

and her hand, with the open book, close above his shoulder, regards the

Baptist with an upward look of gentle solemnity, at the same time that

he holds his bent hand over the head of the bird.

'So much for mere description. The inner feeling of the picture, the

motive which has prompted it, has surely hardly ever been surpassed. The

Blessed Virgin, in casting her arm round the infant St John, looks down

on him with a holy complacency for the testimony which he is to bear to

her Son. Notice the human boyish glee with which the Baptist presents

the captured goldfinch, and, on the other hand, the divine look, even of

majesty and creative love, with which the infant Jesus, laying his hand

on the head of the bird, half reproves St John, as it were saying, "Love

them and hurt them not." Notice, too, the unfrightened calm of the bird

itself, passive under the hand of its loving Creator. All these are

features of the very highest power of human art.

'Again, in accompaniments, all is as it should be. The Virgin, modestly

and beautifully draped; St John, girt about the loins, not only in

accord with his well-known prophetic costume, but also as partaking of

sinful humanity, and therefore needing such cincture: the Child

Redeemer, with a slight cincture, just to suggest motherly care, but not

over the part usually concealed, as indeed it never ought to be, seeing

that in Him was no sin, and that it is this spotless purity which is

ever the leading idea in representations of Him as an infant. Notice,

too, his foot, beautifully resting on that of his mother; the unity

between them being thus wonderfully though slightly kept up. Her eye has

just been dwelling on the book of the Prophecies open in her hand; and

thus the spectator's thought is ruled in accordance with the high

mission of the Holy One of God, and thrown forward into the grand and

blessed future. It is a holy and wonderful picture; I had not seen any

in Italy which had struck or refreshed me more.'[14]

And allow me to write two or three words with regard to the 'Madonna

della Sedia,' or our Lady of the Chair, an engraving of which used to

charm me when a child. The Virgin, very young and simple-looking in her

loveliness, is seated on a low chair, clasping the Divine Child, who is

leaning in weariness on her breast. In the original picture, St John

with his cross is standing--a boy at the Virgin's knee, but he is absent

from the old engraving. The meek adoring tenderness in the face of the

mother, the holy ingenuousness in that of the child, are expressions to

be long studied.

Of Raphael's cartoons, which, so many of us can see for ourselves, I

cannot trust myself to do more than to repeat what strikes me as a

singularly apt phrase of Hazlitt's, given by Mrs Jameson, that the

cartoons are instances in which 'the corruptible has put on

incorruption.' That from the very slightness of the materials employed,

and the very injuries which the cartoons have sustained, we have the

greatest triumph of art, where 'the sense of power supersedes the

appearance of effort,' and where the result is the more majestic for

being in ruins. 'All other pictures look like oil and varnish, we are

stopped and attracted by the colouring, the penciling, the finishing,

the instrumentality of art; but the on the canvas.... There is nothing

between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see Scripture

histories, and amidst the wreck of colour and the mouldering of material

beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad imminent

shadows of calm contemplation and majestic pains.'

And that Raphael did not neglect the minutest details in these sketches,

will be seen by the accompanying note: 'The foreground of Raphael's two

cartoons, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," and "The Charge to

Peter," are covered with plants of the common sea cole-wort, of which

the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the

patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and

thoughtful labour to the great mind of Raphael.'--_Ruskin_.

Whole clusters of anecdotes gather round the cartoons, which, as they

have to do with the work and not the worker, I leave untouched, with

regret. But I must forewarn my readers by mentioning some of the refuted

criticisms which have been applied to the cartoons. Reading the

criticisms and their answers ought to render us modest and wary in

'picking holes' in great pictures, as forward and flippant critics, old

and young, are tempted to pick them. With regard to the 'Miraculous

Draught of Fishes,' a great outcry was once set up that Raphael had made

the boat too little to hold the figures he has placed in it. But Raphael

made the boat little advisedly; if he had not done so, the picture would

have been 'all boat,' a contingency scarcely to be desired; on the

other hand, if Raphael had diminished the figures to suit the size of

the boat, these figures would not have suited those of the other

cartoons, and the cartoon would have lost greatly in dignity and effect.

In the cartoon of the 'Death of Ananias,' carping objectors were ready

to suggest that Raphael had committed an error in time by introducing

Sapphira in the background counting her ill-gotten gains, at the moment

when her no less guilty husband has fallen down in the agonies of death.

It was hours afterwards that Sapphira entered into the presence of the

apostles. But we must know that time and space do not exist for

painters, who have to tell their story at one stroke, as it were.

In the treating of the 'Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,'

some authorities have found fault with Raphael for breaking the

composition into parts by the introduction of pillars, and, farther,

that the shafts are not straight. Yet by this treatment Raphael has

concentrated the principal action in a sort of frame, and thus has been

enabled to give more freedom of action to the remaining figures in the

other divisions of the picture. 'It is evident, moreover, that had the

shafts been perfectly straight, according to the severest law of good

taste in architecture, the effect would have been extremely disagreeable

to the eye; by their winding form they harmonize with the manifold forms

of the moving figures around, and they illustrate, by their elaborate

elegance, the Scripture phrase, "the gate which is called

Beautiful."'--_Mrs Jameson_.

Of Raphael's portraits I must mention that wonderful portrait of Leo X.,

often reckoned the best portrait in the world for truth of likeness and

excellence of painting, and those of the so-called 'Fornarina,' or

'baker'. Two Fornarinas are at Rome and one at Florence. There is a

story that the original of the first two pictures was a girl of the

people to whom Raphael was attached; and there is this to be said for

the tradition, that there is an acknowledged coarseness in the very

beauty of the half-draped Fornarina of the Barberini Palace. The

'Fornarina' of Florence is the portrait of a noble woman, holding the

fur-trimming of her mantle with her right hand, and it is said that the

picture can hardly represent the same individual as that twice

represented in Rome. According to one guess the last 'Fornarina' is

Vittoria Colonna, the Marchesa de Pescara, painted by Seba Piombo,

instead of by Raphael; and according to another, the Roman 'Fornarina'

is no Fornarina beloved by Raphael, but Beatrice Pio, a celebrated

improvisatrice of the time.

An 'innovation of modern times is to spell Raphael's name in England as

the modern Italians spelt it, _Raffaelle_, a word of four syllables, and

yet to pronounce this Italian word as if it were English, as _Raphael_.

Vasari wrote Raffaello; he himself wrote Raphael on his pictures, and

has signed the only autograph letter we have of his, Raphaello.'[15]

Titian, or Tiziano Vecelli, the greatest painter of the Venetian

School, reckoned worthy to be named with Lionardo, Michael Angelo and

Raphael, was born of good family at Capo del Cadore in the Venetian

State, in 1477. There is a tradition that while other painters made

their first essays in art with chalk or charcoal, the boy Titian, who

lived to be a glorious colourist, made his earliest trials in painting

with the juice of flowers. Titian studied in Venice under the Bellini,

and had Giorgione, who was born in the same year, for his

fellow-scholar, at first his friend, later his rival. When a young man

Titian spent some time in Ferrara; there he painted his 'Bacchus and

Ariadne,' and a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia. In 1512, when Titian was

thirty-five years of age, he was commissioned by the Venetians to

continue the works in the great council-hall, which the advanced age of

Gian Bellini kept him from finishing. Along with this commission Titian

was appointed in 1516 to the office of la Sanseria, which gave him the

duty and privilege of painting the portraits of the Doges as long as he

held the office; coupled with the office was a salary of one hundred

and twenty crowns a year. Titian lived to paint five Doges; two others,

his age, equal to that of Gian Bellini, prevented him from painting.

In 1516, Titian painted his greatest sacred picture, the 'Assumption of

the Virgin.' In the same year he painted the poet Ariosto, who mentions

the painter with high honour in his verse.

In 1530, Titian, a man of fifty-three years, was at Bologna, where there

was a meeting between Charles V, and Pope Clement VII., when he was

presented to both princes.

Charles V, and Philip II, became afterwards great patrons and admirers

of Titian, and it is of Charles V. and Titian that a legend, to which I

have already referred, is told. The Emperor, visiting the painter while

he was at work, stooped down and picked up a pencil, which Titian had

let fall, to the confusion and distress of the painter, when Charles

paid the princely compliment, 'Titian is worthy of being served by

Cæsar.' Titian painted many portraits of Charles V., and of the members

of his house. As Maximilian had created Albrecht Dürer a noble of the

Empire, Charles V, created Titian a Count Palatine, and a Knight of the

Order of St Iago, with a pension, which was continued by Philip II., of

four hundred crowns a year. It is doubtful whether Titian ever visited

the Spain of his patrons, but Madrid possesses forty-three of his

pictures, among them some of his finest works.

Titian went to Rome in his later years, but declined to abandon for Rome

the painter's native Venice, which had lavished her favours on her son.

He lived in great splendour, paying annual summer visits to his

birth-place of Cadore, and occasionally dwelling again for a time at

Ferrara, Urbino, Bologna. In two instances he joined the Emperor at

Augsburgh. When Henry III, of France landed at Venice, he was

entertained _en grand seigneur_ by Titian, then a very old man; and when

the king asked the price of some pictures which pleased him, Titian at

once presented them as a gift to his royal guest.

Titian married, as has been recently ascertained, and had three

children,--two sons, the elder a worthless and scandalous priest; the

second a good son and accomplished painter; and a daughter, the

beautiful Lavinia, so often painted by her father, and whose name will

live with his. Titian survived his wife thirty-six years; and his

daughter, who had married, and was the mother of several children, six

years. His second son and fellow-painter died of the same plague which

struck down Titian, in 1566, at the ripe age of eighty-nine years.

Titian is said to have been a man of irritable and passionate temper.

The hatred between him and the painter, Pordenone, was so bitter, that

the latter thought his life in danger, and painted with his shield and

poniard lying ready to his hand. Titian grasped with imperious tenacity

his supremacy as a painter, sedulously kept the secrets of his skill,

and was most unmagnanimously jealous of the attainments of his scholars.

No defect of temper, however, kept Titian from having two inseparable

convivial companions--one of them the architect, Sansovino, and the

other the profligate wit, Aretino, who was pleased to style himself the

'friend of Titian and the scourge of princes.' Though Titian is said, in

the panic of the great plague, to have died not only neglected, but

plundered before his eyes, still Venice prized him so highly, that she

made in his favour the single exception of a public funeral, during the

appalling devastation wrought by the pestilence.

From an engraving of a portrait of Titian by himself, which is before

me, I can give the best idea of his person. He looks like one of the

merchant princes, whom he painted so often and so well, in richly furred

gown, massive chain, and small cap, far off his broad forehead: a

stately figure, with a face--in its aquiline nose and keen eyes, full of

sagacity and fire, which no years could tame.

Towards the close of Titian's life, there was none who even approached

the old Venetian painter in the art which he practised freely to the

last. Painting in Italy was everywhere losing its pre-eminence. It had

become, even when it was not so nominally, thoroughly secularized;--and

with reason, for the painters by their art-creed and by their lives were

fitter to represent gods and goddesses, in whom no man believed, than to

give earnest expression to a living faith. Even Titian, great as he was,

proved a better painter of heathen mythology than of sacred subjects.

But within certain limits and in certain directions, Titian stands

unequalled. He has a high place for composition and for drawing, and his

colouring was, beyond comparison, grand and true. He was great as a

landscape painter, and he was the best portrait painter whom the world

ever saw. In his painting is seen, not, indeed, the life of the spirit,

but the life of the senses 'in its fullest power,' and in Titian there

was such large mastery of this life, that in his freedom there was no

violence, but the calmness of supreme strength, the serenity of perfect

satisfaction. His painting was a reflection of the old Greek idea of the

life of humanity as a joyous existence, so long as the sun of youth,

maturity, health, and good fortune shone, without even that strain of

foreboding pain, and desperate closing with fate, which troubled the

bliss of ancient poet or sculptor. A large proportion of Titian's

principal pictures are at Venice and Madrid.

Among Titian's finest sacred pictures, are his 'Assumption of the

Virgin,' now in the Academy, Venice, where 'the Madonna, a powerful

figure, is borne rapidly upwards, as if divinely impelled; ..,

fascinating groups of infant angels surround her, beneath stand the

apostles, looking up with solemn gestures;' and his 'Entombment of

Christ,' a picture which is also in Venice. Titian's Madonnas were not

so numerous as his Venuses, many of which are judged excellent examples

of the master. His 'Bacchus and Ariadne,' in the National Gallery, is

described by Mrs Jameson, 'as presenting, on a small scale, an epitome

of all the beauties which characterize Titian, in the rich, picturesque,

animated composition, in the ardour of Bacchus, who flings himself from

his car to pursue Ariadne; the dancing bacchanals, the frantic grace of

the bacchante, and the little joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of

the sacrifice.'

Titian's landscapes are the noble backgrounds to many of his pictures.

These landscapes were not only free, but full. 'The great masters of

Italy, almost without exception, and Titian, perhaps, more than any

other (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape), are in the

constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the

most laborious botanical fidelity; witness the Bacchus and Ariadne, in

which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia,

and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the

blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have

been studied with the most exquisite accuracy.'--_Ruskin_.

In portraits, Titian conveyed to the sitters and transferred to his

canvas, not only a life-likeness, but a positively noble dignity in that

likeness. What in Van Dyck and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the bestowing of

high breeding and dainty refinement, became under Titian's brush

dignity, pure and simple, very quiet, and wonderfully real. There is

this peculiarity in connection with the number of portraits which Titian

executed, that many of them have descended to us without further titles

than those of 'A Venetian Senator,' 'A Lady,' etc., etc., yet of the

individual life of the originals no one can doubt. With regard to

Titian's portraits of women, I have already referred to those of his

beautiful daughter, Lavinia. In one portrait, in the Berlin Museum, she

is holding a plate of fruit; in another, in England, the plate of fruit

is changed into a casket of jewels; in a third, at Madrid, Lavinia is

Herodias, and bears a charger with the head of John the Baptist. A

'Violante'--as some say, the daughter of Titian's scholar, Palma, though

dates disprove this--sat frequently to Titian, and is said to have been

loved by him.

I have written, in connection with Lionardo's 'Jaconde' and Raphael's

'Fornarina,' of Titian's 'Bella Donna.' He has various 'Bellas,' but, as

far as I know, this is _the_ 'Bella Donna,'--'a splendid, serious

beauty, in a red and blue silk dress,' in the Sciarra Gallery, Rome.

I have read that critics were at one time puzzled by the singular

yellow, almost straw colour, appearing profusely in the hair of the

women of the Venetian painters of this time, and that it was only by

consulting contemporary records that it was learnt that the Venetian

women indulged in the weak and false vanity of dyeing their black hair a

pale yellow--a process, in the course of which the women drew the hair

through the crown of a broad-brimmed hat, and spreading it over the

brim, submitted patiently to bleaching the hair in a southern sun.

Among Titian's portraits of men, those of the 'Emperor Charles V.' and

the 'Duke of Alva' are among the most famous.

Titian painted, and painted wonderfully, to the very last. He was

eighty-one when he painted the 'Martyrdom of St Lawrence,' one of his

largest and grandest compositions, and in the last year of his life he

painted--leaving it not quite completed,--a 'Pietà;' showing that his

hand owned the weight of years,[16] but the conception of the subject is

still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while,

Titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every

gradation of tone.