Raffaele is called to Rome, and employed upon the
Stanze--His frescoes there--His other works--Change in his
manner--Compared with Michael Angelo--His death, character,
and style.
The letter alluded to at the close of our preceding chapter may be
regarded as the matured result of Raffaele's careful study of the
Tuscan masters, and an index of his resolution to rival the admired
cartoons which had recently placed Da Vinci and Buonarroti at the
head of living artists. Another scene was, however, reserved for his
triumphs. Julius II. had begun to construct the metropolitan church
and palace of Christendom with an energy befitting his character and
the undertaking. Michael Angelo and Bramante were already in his
service, and he sought to enlist talent and genius from all quarters
for this object. The friendly influence of the ducal family, the
recommendations of Bramante, or his own extending fame, possibly an
acquaintance formed with him at Urbino in 1506, may have suggested
Raffaele as a worthy associate in the work. On the Pope's summons
he abandoned his projects at Florence early in the autumn of 1508,
and, leaving several pictures to be finished by his worthy follower
Ridolfo Ghirlandaio,
"Repaired
To the great city, an emporium then
Of golden expectations, and receiving
Freights every day from a new world of hope."
The tower of Borgia, named from Alexander VI., was at that period
the pontifical residence, and on its decoration the best artists
had been successfully employed. The lower story was terminated under
Alexander by Pinturicchio and his pupils; the upper had already
engaged the hands of Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, and Perugino,
but several of its compartments remained unpainted. One of these
was assigned to Raffaele, and so gratifying was his success that
the Pope, with headlong and unhappy haste, ordered all the finished
frescoes of the upper suite to be demolished, and the four rooms of
which it consisted to be delivered over to his unfettered discretion.
This lamentable precipitancy effaced many works of inestimable
importance to art, and condemned the noblest productions of pictorial
genius to walls in every respect ill-adapted for their reception.
The frescoes now occupying these _stanze_ are to Italian painting
what the Divina Commedia of Dante is to Italian poetry: the lovers
of both, in despair of imitating their excellences, have expended
their enthusiastic admiration in volumes of illustrative criticism.
These compositions of Raffaele form a magnificent epic in which
are strikingly interwoven the endowments of human intellect, the
doctrines of Catholic faith, and the incidents of ecclesiastical
history, all as conducing to the triumphs of the Christian church.
The four rooms may be regarded as four books, each subdivided
into as many themes or cantos. In the Camera della Segnatura, the
ceiling presents allegorical figures of Poetry, Jurisprudence,
Philosophy, and Theology, with a large composition on the side walls
corresponding to each. For Poetry we have Mount Parnassus, with
Apollo and the Muses on its laurel-clustered summit, surrounded by
the most famous bards and minstrels. Jurisprudence is a severely
simple group, consisting of Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude,
the virtues by which justice is promoted on earth; while the
text-books of Roman and Canon law are issued by Justinian and
Gregory IX., in subsidiary panels. Philosophy is embodied in the
famous School of Athens, as it has been incorrectly named, where
fifty figures, attending a scholastic disputation between Plato
and Aristotle, include the noblest names of ancient science, the
selection of whom displays extraordinary knowledge of the history
of mind. Theology, generally called the Disputa del Sacramento,
is divided into two scenes. Seated in the heavens amid an angelic
choir, the Holy Trinity is surrounded by the Madonna, the Precursor,
and a glorified assemblage of patriarchs, prophets, and warriors of
the Old Testament; apostles, evangelists, and martyrs of the New
Dispensation. Below, the fathers of the Church and its most eminent
divines expound to an audience of distinguished personages the
mysteries of faith, which are symbolised by the Eucharist exposed
upon an elevated altar in token of man's redemption.
The stanza called that of Heliodorus has on the roof four signal
manifestations of himself by the Almighty to the patriarchs. The
first mural compartment represents the holiest mystery of the Romish
faith established in the Miracle of Bolsena, whereby a doubting
priest was supernaturally convinced of the divine presence in
transubstantiation. Opposite is the miraculous deliverance from
prison of St. Peter, the founder of the Romish Church; and the
two corresponding subjects illustrate the power committed to his
successors for arresting the invasion of pagan force personified in
Attila, and for cleansing from the temple of Christ its sacrilegious
plunderers, with Heliodorus at their head.
Having thus illustrated the divine origin of man's chief faculties,
and of ecclesiastical authority, Raffaele in the two remaining rooms
exchanged allegory for historical delineation. That called the Stanza
del Incendio shows us the Coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III., and
the justification of that Pontiff on oath in presence of the same
Emperor; the Victory of Leo IV. over the Saracens at Ostia, and his
supernaturally staying a conflagration which threatened the basilicon
of St. Peter,--a theme belonging rather to the category of the
second room. The ceiling here, having been executed by Perugino, and
reverently spared by Raffaele from the sweeping sentence of Julius,
has no immediate bearing upon these subjects, though full of fervid
feeling.
The last and largest of the suite is called the Hall of Constantine,
whose religious history is there delineated in four leading scenes:
his Baptism, by St. Silvester; his Vision of the Cross before Battle;
his Victory over Maxentius at the Ponte Milvio; and his Donation of
Rome and its temporalities to the successors of St. Peter. The roof,
of posterior date and far inferior merit, has nothing to do with
Raffaele's creations.
This meagre outline may indicate the leading theme of these the
grandest compositions of modern art; but to form an idea of their
difficulties, of the varied and profound knowledge they display, of
the many noble episodes they embrace, and of all the interesting
portraits they embody, demands no brief or light study, no ordinary
learning or accomplishment. Nor is it easy to appreciate their
technical merits or artistic beauties, vast as is their extent, with
baffling and insufficient cross-lights, and a surface considerably
impaired. Hence the general disappointment felt by casual and
superficial visitors, and the superior gratification afforded
by good engravings of the series. In these, and in the not less
perfect tapestry-cartoons which it is the privilege of our country
to possess, may be appreciated Raffaele's unity of composition, his
symmetrical and unostentatious design, his full contours and flowing
lines, and the earnest but unaffected sensibility which distinguishes
his transcendent works.
That the whole sixteen mural paintings and two of the ceilings were
designed by Raffaele is beyond question; the portions executed by
himself, and those assigned to his pupils, are matter of keen
controversy, upon which we need not enter. It is, however, agreed
that the Camera della Segnatura, and half that of Heliodorus, belong
to the reign of Julius, whilst the Stanza del Incendio was painted
under Leo X., when Sanzio's manifold employments and commissions
obliged him to entrust too much to his scholars. Of the Sala di
Costantino only two figures, painted in oil as an experiment, had
been finished when premature death closed his career of glory. The
price allowed for each fresco seems to have been about 1200 ducats of
gold.[183] Theology, the earliest of the series, painted immediately
on his arrival at Rome, has most of the freshness and devotional
sentiment of his early genius and Umbrian education. It and the
Philosophy are most pregnant with abstruse scholarship, drawn in
part from the learned companionship of Duke Guidobaldo's court. The
glowing and harmonious colouring of the Heliodorus, and Miracle of
Bolsena fully equals any known production of Venetian art; and in the
Incendio, the Heliodorus, and the Battle of Maxentius, we have the
energy and vigour of Michael Angelo, without his exaggerations. In
all may be seen the vast stride he had made from the timid Cenacolo
at Florence, while his transition from Peruginesque hatching to a
full and free streak, and a bold handling, is particularly traceable
in the Disputa, which Passavant justly characterises as surpassing
every antecedent effort of pictorial art.
[Footnote 183: FEA, _Notizie_, p. 9. Raffaele's own letter
of 1514 mentions that sum for each Stanza.]
The death of Julius II. in 1513, eventually proved nowise detrimental
to Raffaele's advancement; for the new Pope not only followed out
those decorations which he found in progress at the Vatican, but soon
made new calls upon their artist, whose labours during the remaining
seven years of his short span appear almost beyond belief. Of the
Stanze, ten new subjects were composed, and several of them in part
executed by him in that time, besides the architecture and all the
elaborate decoration of the Loggie, the finished cartoons for twelve
or thirteen large tapestries, the decorations of the Farnesina,
Bibbiena, Lante, Madama, and Magliana villas, the frescoes of Sta.
Maria della Pace, the Chigi Chapel in Sta. Maria del Popolo, a
variety of altar and cabinet pictures, including his Madonnas of San
Sisto and del Pesce, the Sta. Cecilia, and, last but most glorious
of all, the Transfiguration; besides numerous portraits, and many
drawings for the burin of Marcantonio. Add to this a journey to
Florence in 1514, his architectural designs for several palaces there
and at Rome, a general superintendence of the antiquities in and
around the Eternal City, and the principal charge of the building of
St. Peter's, at a yearly salary of 300 scudi.
The necessary results of thus over-taxing mind and body was
prejudicial to the quality of the works, and to the constitution
of their author. His paintings, left in a great measure to pupils,
often showed a hurried and inferior execution, ill compensated
by the broader treatment which he was forced to adopt. The
metropolitan fabric, itself an ample occupation for the highest
genius and constant industry of one man, languished under inadequate
superintendence. The delicate frame of Raffaele, exhausted by mental
fatigue, was incapable of resisting the first attack of disease.
But brief and utterly imperfect as this sketch has hitherto been, we
must now greatly curtail it, and pass by many of his most glorious
undertakings, to touch upon one or two general views.
[Illustration: _Alinari_
THE SPOSALIZIO
_After the picture by Raphael, once in the Ducal Collection at
Urbino, now in the Brera, Milan_]
The devotional influences of the Umbrian school, from which Raffaele
must have imbibed his youthful impressions, were reproduced in his
juvenile works under forms of loveliness new to that mountain land.
His visits to Florence offered fresh inspirations, and taught him
to ingraft upon the conventionalities of Christian art, whatever
his keen sense of beauty could cull from the creations of beneficent
Nature. But he painted her and all her works,
"Not as they are, but as they ought to be;"
nothing mean or debasing found a place in his inventions, and homely
accessories were either refined or thrown into shade. On the banks of
the Arno he became acquainted with another class of elegant forms,
wherein the ancients had developed a beau-ideal, faultless in its
external qualities, but alien to religious sentiment. The reaction
against paganism, which Savonarola's eloquence had effected in the
Tuscan capital, contributed perhaps to save Raffaele from this snare;
but at the court of Rome, and more especially under the Medicean
Leo, the temptation became too strong. Before the twofold seduction
of incarnate beauty and classic forms, the types of his pristine
admiration were gradually effaced, and his fidelity to them waxed
faint. After elevating Christian painting to its culminating point,
he lent himself unwittingly to its degradation, by selecting depraved
loveliness equally for a Madonna or a Venus, by designing from it
indiscriminately a Galatea or a saint. True, that what he lost in
purity is, in the opinion of many, more than counterbalanced by his
progress towards breadth and vigour; but without entering upon so
wide an element of controversy, we may note the fact that, though
all his pupils boldly followed that "new manner," their career was
one of rapid descent, and that those who departed most widely from
their master's purest conceptions have obtained least admiration from
posterity.
Yet we must in a great measure acquit Raffaele of participating in
the corruption which he shrank from combating. No work of depraved
taste or immoral tendency has been brought home to his pencil,
though the dissolute habits of his age readily applauded such
libertinism in Giulio Romano, Titian, and Correggio. As to the
long current statement, that his premature death was a well-earned
result of vicious indulgences, the evidence, when sifted by
recent research, entitles him to at least a negative verdict. No
contemporary testimony gives the slightest countenance to the charge.
It originated in a vague and random sentence of a commentator upon
Ariosto, wherein four assertions out of six are palpably unfounded,
and its gossiping character procured it a too ready admission from
Vasari. The pure character of his works meets it with an effectual
contradiction, on which those who best understand physiological
conformation will most implicitly rely:--
"Love is too earthly, sensual for his dream;
He looks beyond it with his spirit eyes."
Another allegation remains to be examined, more detrimental to the
artist, though less so to the man. During his progress through
various styles, and in the composition of many works, Raffaele is
said to have freely appropriated the ideas of others. There can
scarcely be a doubt that his Graces were suggested by the antique
marble at Siena; that several noble conceptions were transferred by
him from the Carmine to the Vatican; that a group in the Incendio del
Borgo was borrowed from Virgil's Trojan epic; that the arabesques of
the Loggie were partly taken from the thermal corridors of Titus;
and that other still more curious resemblances have been detected
by an acute writer to whom we have already referred.[184] But such
appropriations were established by authoritative precedents, from
the conventionalities of Christian painting to the plagiarisms
of Michael Angelo. The right to repeat themselves or others was
recognised, though men of high genius rarely stooped to its absolute
exercise. Raffaele,--"always imitating, always original," if we
follow Sir Joshua's not unbiased strictures,--will accordingly be
found, on closer examination, to have adapted rather than adopted
the thoughts of others. Like the busy bee, culling sweets from every
flower, he separated the honey from the wax, and reproduced, in new
shapes and varied combinations, whatever of beauty he met with in
nature or art. We may add another dictum of Sir Joshua,--"his known
wealth was so great, that he might borrow where he pleased without
loss of credit." These considerations seem fairly applicable to the
influence exercised by Michael Angelo upon a few works of Sanzio.
But if not the canon of criticism must be impartially administered.
When the vigour of Buonarroti is adjudged to have been filched from
Signorelli, his stalwart anatomy acknowledged as the legacy of
Pollaiuolo; when Domenichino stands arraigned for transferring to
his chef-d'oeuvre, the communion of St. Jerome, the exact motive
and theme of his master, Ludovico Caracci's canvas in the Pinacoteca
at Bologna, it will be time to admit Reynolds's proposition, that
"it is to Michael Angelo we owe even the existence of Raffaele,
and that to him Raffaele owes the grandeur of his style." Sanzio,
in truth, shrank not from competing with whatever he deemed worthy
of emulation. But his was a fair and friendly rivalry, however
little its spirit was understood or reciprocated by the wayward and
overbearing Florentine, whose charge against Raffaele and Bramante
of undermining him with Julius II., adduced in an idle letter, is
not only contradicted by the character of these great men, but it
is palpably improbable. To their influence, Buonarroti ascribes the
suspension of that Pontiff's tomb, regarding which we shall have
much to say in our fifty-third chapter. But as neither of them were
sculptors, and as the Florentine was not yet known to the Pope,
either as an architect or a painter, such jealousy would have been
absurd; whilst the taunt of Sanzio's owing all he knew of art to
Michael Angelo can only be regarded as the petty ebullition of a
notoriously wayward temper. The employment of the latter upon the
huge bronze statue of his Holiness at Bologna, was the real reason
for the interruption of the monument, which it was reserved for Duke
Francesco Maria I. to have completed.
[Footnote 184: _Quarterly Review_, No. cxxxi. pp. 20, 25, 32, 42.]
Between these great masters no parallel can be fairly drawn, and
had they wrought in the same town they would seldom have been
placed in rivalry. But belonging to different states, and heading
the antagonist schools of Rome and Florence, the sectional spirit
of Italy has placed them in contrast, and has adopted their names
as watchwords of local jealousy. In truth, Raffaele's advancement
in anatomical accuracy was a necessary consequence of the growing
naturalism of his time; and the improvement could not fail to
develop the breadth of his pencil, as well as to enlarge the sphere
of his compositions. The absolute amelioration of his works, after
he settled at Rome, was therefore inevitable from the spirit of
the age acting upon a genius not yet matured. That spirit Michael
Angelo exaggerated rather than embodied; and to the purer taste of
his rival many of his productions must have been beacons rather
than models. There is, indeed, some truth, with much malice, in the
sarcasm of Pietro Aretino, that the former painted porters, the
latter gentlemen. Induced, perhaps, by some such idle sneer, Raffaele
executed his Isaiah, to prove that the new manner was not beyond
his grasp; but this, his first, and fortunately his last work, in
which a direct imitation of the terrible Florentine is discernible,
is now the least admired of his mural paintings; and some portion
of its Michael Angelesque character has even been attributed to the
after-restorations of Daniele di Volterra. The Poetry in the Stanze
and the frescoes in the church of La Pace, which he has been supposed
to have borrowed from the same source, are traced by more recent
critics to works of Andrea l'Ingegno at Perugia and Assisi. After
these observations, it is scarcely requisite to notice the remark
of Vasari regarding the opportunity stealthily afforded to Raffaele
by Bramante for plagiarising from his rival's gigantic creations on
the roof of the Cappella Sistina. The casual manner in which the
allusion is made does not warrant its being taken up, as it has been,
in the light of a charge against the honour both of Sanzio and his
friend; and even had it been so intended by the Florentine, various
circumstances, besides the high character of those inculpated, are
sufficient to negative the charge. If Raffaele followed Buonarroti's
manner, it must be admitted that he alone did so without thereby
deteriorating his own. Nor ought we to forget that most critics by
whom this question is handled have merely repeated the loose views
of the biographer of Arezzo, whose great aim it was to prove that
the excellences of Sanzio were all borrowed from his Florentine
contemporaries.
The parallel which suggests itself between these gifted
competitors[*185] has been thus stated with equal eloquence and
truth: "The genius of Michael Angelo differed from that of Raffaele
even more in kind than in degree; limited in its object, but intense
in its energy, it gloried in the exhibition of its own colossal
strength, and looked with contempt on those gentler graces that
waited unbidden on the pencil of their favourite worshipper. When the
rivals approached, it was by no common movement; Michael Angelo stood
aloof on the lofty eminence he had chosen; it was Raffaele alone who
dared at times to traverse the wide space that divided them. So great
were the difficulties, so bold the attempt, that all his success,
rapid and wonderful as it was, would have seemed almost necessary
to rescue a character less modest and unassuming than his, from the
charge of hardihood and presumption. With a noble candour he could
scarcely have learned from his haughty antagonist, Raffaele was among
the first to see, the most prompt to acknowledge, the new grandeur
he had given to art.... Even when he rises to the very confines of
sublimity, it is still the sublimity of the beautiful; and when
Michael Angelo stoops for a brief space to court the aid of beauty,
it serves like a transparent veil to soften rather than conceal the
native sublimity of his genius.... Michael Angelo, the painter of
the old covenant, has embodied his genius in the stern and gigantic
forms of Moses and the Prophets; but he failed where Raffaele has
shown as signally his skill, in the gentle dignity of the Saviour
and the heavenly purity of a mother's love.... In his paintings, as
in his character, there appears an unconsciousness of excellence,
a consummation of art carried up to the simplicity of nature, that
anticipates criticism, and allows us to indulge undisturbed in a
fulness of admiration, which grows on the reason long after it has
satisfied the heart. In Michael Angelo's best works there is often,
on the contrary, somewhat so strange and so studied in gesture
and attitude, so evident a design upon our wonder, as almost to
provoke us to resistance, and impair the pure magic of the effect by
attracting our attention to the cause."[186]
[Footnote *185: Far from the parallel "suggesting itself," only a
disorderly mind would make it. No comparison is thinkable between
work that is absolutely different. One might as well compare a valley
with the sea.]
[Footnote 186: _British and Foreign Quarterly_, vol. XIII.]
Honoured by the Pontiff and his brilliant court, idolised by a band
of enthusiastic pupils, engrossed by distinguished commissions,
Raffaele had few thoughts to bestow on his early home. His ties
there had become few and feeble. His father's house had entirely
failed; his only near relation was a maternal uncle, who retained
his warm affection, and scarcely survived him. In writing to that
uncle in 1514, to acquaint him with his signal success and augmenting
wealth, he desires special commendations to the Duke and Duchess,
modestly suggesting that they might be pleased to hear how one
of their servants was doing himself honour. Gratifying as his
extending reputation must have been to them, we find no trace of
special exertions on their part to promote it. Indeed, they had ample
occupation on their own concerns, in the revolution which soon after
exiled them during the rest of Leo's pontificate.
[Illustration: ISABELLA OF ARAGON
_After the picture by Raphael in the Louvre_]
One of Raffaele's best patrons was Agostino Chigi, a Sienese banker,
who, after a most successful career at Rome, became in the prime
of life the millionaire of his day, and who employed his great
wealth, and the preponderating influence it gave him with the papal
government, in a judicious promotion of art. His commissions to
Raffaele include the mural paintings of his chapel in the Madonna
della Pace, the architecture, sculpture, and mosaics of his other
chapel in the Madonna del Popolo, and the architecture and internal
decorations of his urban villa, now the Farnesina. The last has a
melancholy interest, from being the latest work which exercised the
cares of the illustrious artist. Whilst superintending its frescoes
in March, 1520,[187] a summons from the Pope brought him with hurried
steps to the Vatican, where, arriving overheated, he was detained in
a large and chilly saloon until perspiration was checked. An attack
of fever naturally followed, which, advancing to the stage called
pernicious, proved too much for his delicate and over-excited frame,
especially when still further exhausted by injudicious bleeding, in a
belief that the attack was pleurisy. Aware of his danger, he sought
support in his hour of need from the ministrations of religion and
the rites of his Church. Such is the now received account. The most
authentic particulars are contained in a letter, dated from Rome five
days after his death.
[Footnote 187: Yet this casino, begun in 1511, is by some said to
have been completed several years before.]
"About ten o'clock on Good Friday night [April 6th] died Raffaele of
Urbino, the most gentle and most eminent painter, to the universal
regret of all, but especially of the learned.... Envious death,
cutting short his beautiful and laudable undertakings, has torn
from us this master, still young, upon his very natal day. The Pope
himself indulges in uncontrolled grief, and, during the fifteen
days of his illness, sent at least six times to visit and console
him.... We have, indeed, been bereaved of one of rare excellence,
whose loss every noble spirit ought to bewail and lament, not simply
with passing words, but in studied and lasting elegies. He is said
to have left 16,000 ducats, including 5000 in cash, to be divided
for the most part among his friends and household; the house of
Bramante,[188] which he purchased for 3000 ducats, he has given to
the Cardinal [Bibbiena] of S. Maria in Portico. He was buried at the
Rotonda, whither he was borne by a distinguished cortège. His soul
is beyond a doubt gone to contemplate those heavenly mansions where
no trouble enters, but his memory and his name will linger long on
earth, in his works and in the minds of virtuous men.--Much less
loss, in my opinion, though the populace may think otherwise, has
the world sustained in the death of Agostino Chigi last night, as
to which I say little, not yet having heard of his affairs. I have
only learned that, between cash, debts owing to him, securities,
alum-mines, real estate, bank capital, appointments, bullion, and
jewels, he has left eight millions of golden ducats."
[Footnote 188: It stood in front of St. Peter's, and was removed when
the piazza was extended.]
It may be that Raffaele was timeously taken from the evil to come;
since death exempted him from witnessing like Michael Angelo, a
deluge of mediocrity he would have been powerless to withstand.
But the blow was deadened by no such calculation, and seldom have
obsequies so pompous been accompanied by grief as universal. By the
bier, around which his funeral rites were celebrated, there was
hung his great picture of the Transfiguration: the inspired beauty
of its upper portion, and the unfinished state of the remainder,
most touchingly testified his almost superhuman powers, and their
untimely extinction. The place of his sepulture was behind an altar
in the Pantheon Church, for the erection and endowment of which he
provided by testamentary bequest, and where his bones have of late
been reverently but unwarrantably disturbed. This selection appears
to have been dictated by the recent interment near the spot of Maria
Bibbiena, the grand-niece of his friend the Cardinal, to whom he had
been betrothed, and who had lately predeceased him. The little that
we know of this engagement is from the painter's own letter to his
uncle in 1514; and it would seem to have been sought by the Cardinal
rather than by the bridegroom, who appears to have abandoned his
matrimonial arrangements to friendly match-makers with more than
Italian indifference. The idle tale of his looking to a Cardinal's
hat is now set at rest, as well as nearly all the gossip that had
long circulated as to his supposed dissolute habits, and his liason
with that Roman matron whose ample contours and rich flesh-tints have
come down to us on his canvasses, and who, whether his mistress or
not (examples of such licence being then almost universal), seems to
have been a favourite model in his school.[189]
[Footnote 189: Passavant treats the usual legends regarding the
Fornarina as after inventions, and ascribes the earliest notice of
her to PUCCINI'S _Real Galleria di Firenze_, I., p. 6.]
The same pure taste and feeling for beauty, which characterise
the frescoes and pictures of Sanzio, would have raised him to
equal excellence in other branches of art. They are visible in
his architectural compositions, and in his numerous drawings. The
statue of Jonah in the Sta. Maria del Popolo, supposed to have been
modelled, if not wrought, by his hand, proves what he might have
attained in sculpture. He had no time for literary undertakings, but
some sonnets, casually preserved on the back of his sketches, exhibit
him as a cultivator of letters. An interesting result of his official
charge of the antique monuments remains in an eloquent report to the
Pope, in which,
"Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,
Shakes off the dust, and rears its reverend head."
Its authorship has given rise to some controversy, and it seems not
unlikely that the materials supplied by Raffaele were thrown into
shape by his friend Castiglione.
It would be interesting as well as easy to adduce from contemporary
pens proofs of the general admiration for his talents, and popularity
of his manners. But we close this notice, too brief for the subject,
though already exceeding our due limits, with the testimony of his
earliest biographer, and of one of his most recent critics. Vasari
thus commences his life of Sanzio: "The great bounty which Providence
occasionally displays, in heaping upon a single individual an
unlimited measure of favours, and all the rare gifts and graces which
generally are distributed over a long interval and many characters,
may well be seen in Raffaele Sanzio of Urbino. Equally worthy and
engaging, he was endowed with a modesty and goodness sometimes united
in those who, adding to a certain noble refinement of disposition
the attraction of amiable manners, are gracious and pleasing at all
times and with all persons. Nature presented him to the world when,
already vanquished in art by the hand of Michael Angelo, she wished
to be outdone by Raffaele, alike in art and in courtesy. In him she
luminously displayed the most singular excellences, conjoined with
such diligence, discretion, grace, comeliness, and good breeding, as
might have concealed even the greatest blemish, or the most hideous
vice. Hence it may safely be asserted, that those who possess such
rare qualities as were united in Raffaele of Urbino are not mere
human creatures, but rather, if such language be allowable, mortal
divinities." Still more eloquent is the passage lamenting his
untimely death: "Oh, happy and blessed spirit, every one delights to
talk of you, to dwell upon your actions, and to admire every design
which you have left. Well might the art of painting die when this her
noble child was called away; for when his eyes were closed she was
left all but blind. To us, his survivors, it now remains to follow
the example of his excellent manner, cherishing in our memory, and
testifying by our words, the remembrance due to his worth and our
own gratitude. For in truth we have colouring, invention, indeed the
whole art brought by him to a perfection hardly to have been looked
for; nor need any genius ever think to surpass him." In the words of
a writer upon whom we have already drawn:--"Cut down in the flower of
his age, and,--like a favoured tree of his own most favoured land,
while laden with golden fruit, bearing in still unopened blossoms
the promise of a yet brighter future,--he was mourned widely as he
was admired, deeply and truly as he had been loved. Young as he was
in years, and modest in his bearing, there is a feeling of reverence
blended in the fond regret with which even strangers dwell upon his
memory, recount his virtues, and seek to read their impress and
reflection in his works."[190]
[Footnote 190: _British and Foreign Review_, vol. XIII., p. 274.]
A critical examination of the peculiar merits of Raffaele's pencil,
and of the benefits which he brought to art, would lead us further
than this sketch will permit: yet there are certain points so
apparent even to superficial observers, some qualities so unanimously
dwelt upon by his eulogists, that it would be incomplete without
a passing notice of them. To him the perception of beauty was a
sixth sense, ever in exercise, and applied to the creations of his
genius, as well as to his studies from nature. To its test were
submitted those traditional forms of devotional art which influenced
his early training; it imparted life and movement to Perugino's
so-called monotonous poverty; it modified the dramatic action of the
Florentine manner; it caught the full tones of Fra Bartolomeo, and
gave dignity to the simper of Leonardo; it showed that anatomical
accuracy required no muscular contortions; it realised the grand
without verging upon the monstrous; it separated grace from grimace.
This was an innate and personal gift, that could neither be taught
nor imitated. The elevated character, harmonious composition, correct
design, and just colouring which Raffaele stamped upon his school,
were manifested in various degrees by his pupils, but the spirit of
their master was a boon from nature, which none of them could seize
or inherit. There are impetuous and daring minds who delight more
in the energy of Michael Angelo's terrible forms; others luxuriate
with greater fondness on the mellowed depth of Titian's magic tints;
whilst to some the artificial contrasts of Correggio's brilliant
lights, and Leonardo's unfathomable _chiaroscuri_ have irresistible
charm. These eminent qualities are, however, the separate endowments
of four individual minds; but Raffaele, deficient in none of them,
possessed, in no less perfection, other more important requisites
which we have noticed. It was this happy union that rendered him the
unquestioned prince of painters, while the ready obedience of his
unerring hand enabled him to realise the pure conceptions of his
refined mind with a delicacy and truth which seem to defy imitation.
Yet his sterling merit was undeviating propriety in the conception
and execution of his works. Nothing ever emanated from his pencil
offensive to religion, morals, or refinement; all that bears his
name would honour the most fastidious reputation. To him accordingly
there was granted a purity of taste, in none other united to equal
genius. It was this that maintained the elevation of his style amid
the conflicting difficulties and temptations of that "new manner"
which it was his mission to perfect. Thus, although it is in the
productions of his second period that we find the beau-ideal most
perfectly realised, yet, even his later works, which descend to
a closer imitation of nature, seldom fail to invest her with a
dignity rare in the external world. In proportion, therefore, as he
discovered or adopted the more elaborate resources and processes of
his art, his ripening mind supplied him with themes and conceptions
worthy of them, and of immortality. The various series of subjects
which he invented for the Stanze, the Tapestries, and the Loggie,
indicate a grasp of intelligence, a variety of acquirement, never
before or since brought into the service of art, and establish
beyond question that the intellect of Raffaele fully equalled his
taste.[*191]
[Footnote *191: Raphael seems to us to-day to have been a supreme
portrait painter. His other easel pictures, splendid as they often
are in "space composition," seem to lack sincerity. His frescoes have
a perfect decorative value, but little force or real contact with
life. If they sum up the Renaissance, they do so only in part, with
much sacrifice of truth and of that virility and assured contact of
life which were its most precious possessions.]