James Dennistoun

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.

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.

Sposalizio

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:—

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.

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]

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.

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.

"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."

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]

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,

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]

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]