Raffia

“ Raphaels; the first, a little figure executed when he was a boy in the studio of his master Perugino, is now on one side of an altar-piece in the Certosa at Pavia. Later in life, and in one of his finest works, he has introduced his patron saint with infinite beauty of feeling: in the Madonna della Pesce, [98] the Virgin sits upon her throne, with the Infant Christ in her arms; the angel Raphael presents Tobias, who is not here a youth but a child; while the Infant Christ turns away from the wise bearded old doctor, who is intently studying his great book, to welcome the angel and his charge. ”

“ In the Leo X with the Cardinals, Giulio de' Medici and Lorenzo dei Rossi, how tactfully Raphael has contrived the light and shadow so that the fat heavy face of the Pope is not over emphasised, and you discern perfectly the beauty of the head, the delicacy of the nostrils, the clever, sensual, pathetic, witty mouth. And the hands seem to be about to move, to be a little tremulous with life, to be on the verge of a gesture, to have only just become motionless on the edge of the book. It is in these portraits that the art of Raphael is at its greatest, becomes universal, achieves immortality. ”

“ Such boyish efforts of Raphael as the Orleans Madonna, the Three Graces, and the Dream of a Knight, in the National Gallery show Raphael’s complete assimilation of this idyllic manner. The little picture at London in which a stripling Hercules slumbers between an attractive girlish Wisdom and a most innocent effigy of Vice—holding the flower that signifies the primrose path—shows us Raphael at seventeen and by no means precocious.
In the year 1500 he was called from Urbino to work in Perugino’s home shop at Perugia, soon rising to the position of foreman. ”

“ And as she saw Raphael’s dark face gazing into her own and read the words that told of the Erzerum tragedy of more than twenty years ago and that spoke of Raphael as a hero, ready to avenge, she felt care slip from her shoulders just as years before she had felt quick relief upon the setting down of her great bundle on some friendly doorstep. ”

“ Forget the one to-day as we study the other.
"You have read much of Raphael's life, so I will not talk about that. You remember that, when young, he studied in Perugia, in Perugino's studio, and perhaps you will recollect that, when we were there, I told you that his early work was exceedingly like that of this master.
"Now, look! Here right before us is Raphael's Coronation of the Virgin,—his first important painting. See how like Perugino's are the figures. Notice the exquisite angels on either side of the Virgin, which are so often reproduced! ”

“ Learning in the workshop of Perugino to produce the like—such works as the Ansidei Madonna—to produce them very much better than his master, Raphael was already become a freeman of the most strictly religious school of Italian art, the so devout Umbrian soul finding there its purest expression, still untroubled by the naturalism, the intellectualism, the antique paganism, then astir in the artistic soul everywhere else in Italy. ”

“ It is bad for one when the dreams go, and the clear vision begins."
[299] "But Rafael—"
"Rafael, beloved, is contented with the life of the plaza. He will always be; and—the inner court is forever this side of the aliso tree. Come! The stars are thick now, and if we have far to ride—"
Doña Ana untied the mule and the mustang.
"I think they will follow; but it is best, perhaps, to keep a rope on the mustang. I will lead him, and I have a bell I will tie later to his neck; it may help in the dark if we should go wide of the trail." ”

“ The artists believed them with all their souls, as Ruskin has said; so they painted pictures which recall the refrain of Bernard de Cluny’s Rhyme of the Celestial Country. Presently pictures by Perugino, Raphael’s master, and [272] —quite at the other end of the gallery—the portrait of Raphael, painted by himself. This picture is on an easel, and stands apart. Are you familiar with Raphael’s beautiful, calm, young face? It is a face which has passed into a proverb for beauty and serenity. A velvet cap is pushed off the pure brow; the hair is long and waving ”

“ The picture was indeed one of the finest that ever came from Raphael’s pencil; but it was only so much the more a source of grief to the unhappy Francia. He assisted, as desired, in placing it in the situation for which it was intended; but never afterwards had he a happy hour. In one moment he had seen all that he had ever done, all that had been once so much admired, thrown quite into the shade. He was too old to entertain any hope, by renewed efforts, of coming up with the excellence of Raphael, or even approaching it. ”

“ Michael Angelo gains on this acquaintance, and Raphael loses. In the letters of the former, you see profound thought and religious earnestness, a something honest, strong and benevolent, kind and simple. He is something more than merely an artist. Raphael, in his letters, speaks about nothing but money, and when the subject is his own marriage, he mentions that the “lovely child” has such and such a number of scudi. One sees no trace of the great Maestro, and no trace either of noble humanity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the youthful Raphael, on the other hand, at that moment, antiquity, as with "the dew of herbs," seemed therein "to awake and sing" out of the dust, in all its sincerity, its cheerfulness and natural charm. He has turned it into a picture; has helped to make his original only too familiar, perhaps, placing the three sisters against his own favourite, so unclassic, Umbrian background indeed, but with no trace of the Peruginesque ascetic, Gothic meagreness in themselves; emphasising rather, with a hearty acceptance, the nude, the flesh; making the limbs, in fact, a little heavy. ”

“ And there haunted him, too, another peculiarity in the man, which he had never before remarked in any one but Arsenius—that ease and grace, that courtesy and self-restraint, which made Raphael's rebukes rankle all the more keenly, because he felt that the rebuker was in some mysterious way superior to him, and saw through him, and could have won him Over, Or crushed him in argument, or in intrigue —or in anything, perhaps, except mere brute force. Strange—that Raphael, of all men, should in those few moments have reminded him so much of Arsenius ”

“ He goes on building a whole lordly new city of the like as he paints to the end of his life. The subject, we may note, as we leave Perugia in Raphael's company, had been suggested by the famous mystic treasure of its cathedral church, the marriage ring of the Blessed Virgin herself.
Raphael's copy had been made for the little old Apennine town of Città di Castello; and another place he visits at this time is still more [44] effective in the development of his genius. About his twentieth year he comes to Siena—that other rocky Titan's hand, just lifted out of the surface of the plain. ”

“ Interspersed with him at the Pitti hang the stronger and the weaker in splendid abundance. Raphael is there, strong in portraiture--easy, various, bountiful genius that he was--and (strong here isn't the word, but) happy beyond the common dream in his beautiful "Madonna of the Chair." The general instinct of posterity seems to have been to treat this lovely picture as a semi-sacred, an almost miraculous, manifestation. People stand in a worshipful silence before it, as they would before a taper- studded shrine. ”

“ While Raphael accomplished so much as a painter, he by no means gave all his time or thought to a single art. He was made superintendent of the building of St. Peter’s in 1514, and made many architectural drawings for that [Pg 115] church; he was also much interested in the excavations of ancient Rome, and made immense numbers of drawings of various sorts. As a sculptor he made models and designs, and there is in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome, a statue of Jonah sitting on a whale, said to have been modelled by Raphael and put into marble by Lorenzetto Latti. ”

“ It is said that it was from her Raphael inherited his beauty, goodness, mildness, and genius. His father's patron, the Duke of Urbino, was a fine soldier, but he also cherished scholarship and art, and kept at his court not less than twenty or thirty persons at work copying Greek and Latin manuscript which he wished to add to his library.
Raphael had a stepmother, Bernardina, the daughter of a goldsmith, a good and forceful woman, but not gentle like the first wife; and when Raphael was eleven years of age his father, too, died. ”

“ The genius of Raphael was now exalted to heaven, and he received innumerable proofs of favour from the new pontiff, fortunate in having encountered a prince so great, and one on whom the love of art had devolved by hereditary descent. [89]
Thus encouraged, Raphael devoted himself with all his heart to the work, and on another wall of the same apartment, he represented the Approach of Attila towards Rome, and his encounter with Pope Leo III, by whom he is met at the foot of Monte Mario, and who repulses him by the power of his word alone. ”

“ Though Raphael lost his father at the age of eleven, yet to him he certainly owed a great part of that early training which enabled him to produce paintings of apparently mature beauty when he was scarcely twenty years of age. The altarpiece painted by Giovanni for the church of Gradara, and a fresco, now preserved in the Santi house [3] at Urbino, are clearly prototypes of some of Raphael’s most graceful paintings of the Madonna and Child. ”

“ Rafael would think it enough! On my soul, I am glad you are so human—though I have no love myself for heretics!"
"Human!" mused Raquel. "Is it human to remember, when one should forget and cannot?"
She did not say it aloud, and refused to discuss the matter further.
"He is dead," she said; "Rafael cannot be jealous of a man I saw but once; it was only the dream of a girl—like a picture in a book—and the page is closed. I shall marry Rafael, and work in the world instead of in the convent. It is for Mother Church and—it is right!" ”

“ The Count of Africa had thrown for the empire of the world—and lost.
'Brave old Sun!' said Raphael, 'how merrily he flashes off the sword-blades yonder, and never cares that every tiny spark brings a death-shriek after it! Why should he? It is no concern of his. Astrologers are fools. His business is to shine; and on the whole, he is one of my few satisfactory sensations. ”

“ Several of Raphael's most important compositions are known to us only by these early engravings, e.g. the Massacre of the Innocents (engraved by Raimondi) , which is one of his finest works, both for skilful composition and for masterly drawing of the nude. Another magnificent design is the judgment of Paris, containing a large number of figures; the nude figure of Minerva is a work of especial force and beauty. A standing figure of Lucretia [28] about to stab herself is also one of his most lovely figures. Many of Raphael's studies for Marcantonio's engravings still exist. ”

“ To Our Lady also, Raphael has imparted all the beauty which can be imagined in the expression of a virgin; in the eyes there is modesty, on the brow there shines honour, the nose is one of very graceful character, and the mouth betokens sweetness and excellence. In the vestments also, there is an indescribable simplicity with an attractive modesty, which I do not think could possibly be surpassed ”

“ Raphael has always stood without a peer. Raphael lived the better part of his life at Rome under the patronage of Julius II and Leo X, and spent several years in decorating the papal palace of the Vatican. Although he was, for a time, architect of St. Peter's cathedral, and displayed some aptitude for sculpture and for the scholarly study of archæeology, it is as the greatest of modern painters that he is now regarded. Raphael lived fortunately, always in favor, and rich, and bearing himself like a prince. ”

“ Rafael decided to call for help, even at the risk of bringing back his enemy, but his shouts, though he did his best, seemed shut into that granite cleft with him. He attacked the great rock again, and the stones, but without any other result than to tire himself out. At last the creeping fear, against which he had been half unconsciously fighting all the time, was getting the better of his fortitude. ”

“ He was succeeded by Leo X., who also was a generous patron to Raphael, who thus suffered no loss of occupation from the change of popes. The artist became very popular and rich; he had many pupils, and was assisted by them in his great frescoes, not only in the Vatican, but also in the Farnesina Villa or Chigi Palace. Raphael had the power to attach men to him with devoted affection, and his pupils gave him personal service gladly; he was often seen in the street with numbers of them in attendance, just as the nobles were followed by their squires and pages. ”