WITH Giovanni Sanzi[*161] we have already made acquaintance as an epic poet. The patient labour of the AbbÉ Pungeleoni, and the critical acumen of Passavant, have amply refuted Malvasia's spiteful, and Lanzi's careless but often quoted assertions, that the father of Raffaele was an obscure potter, or, at best, an indifferent artist, from whom his son could learn little.[162] Those only who have traced out his pictures in the remote townships and villages of his native duchy, and who estimate his works by coeval productions, can appreciate his real merits. Giovanni Sanzi was of a humble family in the village of Colbordolo, a few miles east of Urbino, for whose fictitious ancestry of artists there has been substituted by his painstaking but most puzzle-headed eulogist, a pedigree of peasantry from the middle of the fourteenth century. The son of one Sante, he assumed the patronymic Santi or Sanzi, which was subsequently euphonised by Bembo for his son into Sanzio. His grandfather Peruzuolo, after his losses by the Malatesta forays already alluded to,[163] had sold the petty holdings he possessed at Colbordolo, and removed his family to Urbino, where Sante became a retail dealer in various wares, and where he seems to have died in easy circumstances in 1485, nine years before his son. The inquiries of Pungeleoni have failed to ascertain the time of Giovanni's birth, but it was probably to these losses that the poet thus touchingly alludes, in his dedication,[164] as the impulse under which he became a painter:—"It would be tedious to relate the many straits and headlong precipices through which I have steered my life since fate devoured in flames my paternal nest, wherein was consumed all our substance; but arriving at the age when perhaps inclination would have led me to some more useful exercise of talent, of the many lines by which I might have gained a living, I devoted myself to the marvellous art of painting, which indeed (in addition to the round of domestic cares, of all human concerns the most ceaseless torment) imposes a burden heavy even to the shoulders of Atlas, and in which distinguished profession I blush not to be enrolled." Neither are we enabled to throw any light upon the lessons to which Giovanni resorted for instruction in the calling which he thus, at some sacrifice of material interests, had adopted. The catalogue of contemporary artificers introduced into his Chronicle, including all that was eminent from Gentile da Fabriano to Leonardo da Vinci, shows a most extensive acquaintance with their respective styles, as well as their names.[165] Mantegna is one of them whom he specially extols; there is, however, no similarity between their productions. Yet, though we know nothing of Sanzi's artistic education, the works which Nelli, Gentile da Fabriano, and Piero della Francesca left in Urbino must have influenced his early impressions; and it is singular that nothing is said by them of these, and others who painted in the duchy, beyond the passing notice bestowed with little discrimination on all his contemporaries. The marked exclusion from this list of Justus of Ghent is plausibly conjectured by Passavant to indicate a professional jealousy of one who treasured as his secret the so-called oil painting brought by him from Flanders, and certainly never attained by Giovanni. Sanzi's manner partakes generally of the Umbrian character,—grave, reflective, self-possessed, without aiming at dramatic effect or artificial embellishment, yet not deficient in variety, or graceful expression. More severe than Perugino, he approaches the serious figures of Melozzo da ForlÌ, but subdues their naturalism by an infusion of devotional sincerity and simple feeling. He is partial to slender forms and delicately drawn feet and hands, but the contours are dark and hard, the flesh-tints dull and heavy, tending to cold gray in the shadows, and generally deficient in middle tints and reflections. His female faces are oval, often of a dusky complexion, and their foreheads singularly full. In the nude, he was in advance of his age, and in landscape he attained great proficiency. Pungileone enumerates about twenty of his pictures, many of them still in their original sites, and exhibiting considerable inequality of merit. But his capo-d'opera, and one of the most important monuments of Umbrian art, is the fresco in the Tiranni chapel, at S. Domenico of Cagli. In the recess over the altar is the Madonna, enthroned between two angels, in one of whom is understood to be portrayed the young Raffaele, then a child of eight or nine years old. At the sides stand Saints Peter, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and John Baptist. On the lunette above, Christ has just emerged from his tomb in the mountain rock: a glorious Deity, the conqueror of death, he bears in his left hand the banner of salvation, while his right is raised to bless a redeemed world, and scattered around lie six guards asleep, foreshortened in various and difficult attitudes. The vaulted roof displays a choir of angelic children, sounding their instruments and chanting songs of glory to the Saviour, who occupies its centre, holding the book of life: and on the external angles are small medallions of the Annunciation. There is, perhaps, no contemporary painting superior to this in grandeur of composition and stately pose of the figures; nor is it less admirable for novelty of composition and variety and ease of movement. The design is at once correct and flowing, and the expression, though fervid, oversteps not truth and nature. Passavant well observes that the breadth, vigour, and dexterous treatment of this painting proved its author to have been well practised in fresco, although but one other such work of his has escaped destruction or whitewash. In his house at Urbino, there is a small mural painting, removed many years since from the ground-floor to the first story, which tradition fondly claims as a boyish production of Raffaele, but which Passavant ascribes to Sanzi, conjecturing it to represent his wife and child. It is impossible to pronounce a satisfactory judgment as to the master, from the load of over-painting in oil. Though called a Madonna and Child, it seems rather a gentle mother, who, having hushed her babe to sleep upon her knee, reads from the breviary on a stand by her seat, and the composition and attitudes present a charming naÏvetÉ and natural expression. Connoisseurs agree in rejecting its claims as a work of Raffaele; nor does it quite resemble his father's usual type, though it is difficult to substitute any more plausible theory for the conclusion of Passavant. The reader may form his own judgment from the accompanying outline, bearing in mind that much of the drapery belongs to the pencil of a merciless restorer.

Such was the father to whom there was born at Urbino, on the 6th of April, 1483,[*166] a son Raffaele[167]; the superiority of whose qualities to those of preceding artists, and to ordinary men, has been acknowledged in several languages by the epithet "divine." Although ever the object of pride and popularity to all Italy, the incidents of his life have, until of late years, been comparatively neglected, and more ample justice has been rendered to his fame by ultramontane than by native biographers. Vasari's narrative, though compiled with more than his usual pains, and lavish in laudatory epithets, is far from satisfactory. Its author was the partial historian of a rival school, the favourite pupil of its jealous head. As a Florentine, moreover, he was bound by Italian usage to keep in shadow the merits of all "foreign" competitors and teachers. Raffaele he never saw, whose best pupils had left Rome ere Vasari visited the eternal city: with his Apennine home, its records and memorials, the latter had probably no personal acquaintance. While, therefore, we own our obligations to the writer of Arezzo for many important facts and valuable criticisms, we feel surprised that during above two centuries no attempt was made to supplement his obvious deficiencies.

Another meagre life of Raffaele, composed soon after his death, and upon which Vasari seems to have drawn largely, was published by Comolli in 1790, from an anonymous MS.

It may be well to preface these observations by borrowing a passage of equal aptness and eloquence from an able review of Passavant's work.[168]

"We may doubt whether in the whole range of modern history, or within the compass of modern Europe, one moment or one spot could be found more singularly propitious than those which glory in Raffaele's birth. He was happy in his parentage and in his patrons, in his master and in his pupils, in his friends and in his rivals: the first misfortune of his life was its rapid and untimely close. He was late enough to profit by the example, early enough to feel the living influence of four of the greatest masters of his art, of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Giorgione, and Fra Bartolomeo. The art of painting in oil had been introduced into Italy barely half a century before his birth; its technical difficulties were already mastered, but it still awaited a master's hand to develop its latent capabilities. His short life included the Augustan age of papal Rome, the age of its splendour and magnificence, if not of its power, and he died almost before the far-off sound of the rising storm had broken the religious calm, or foretold the coming miseries of Italy. The two pontiffs whom he served out-shone the most illustrious of their predecessors in their luxurious tastes and lavish patronage of the fine arts; and these arts still served the Church, not only with the grateful zeal of favoured children, but with the earnest devotion of undoubting faith.... In the age of Raffaele, while the rich and often graceful legends of the Catholic mythology still retained their ancient hold on the popular belief, the growing taste among the learned of the day for the literature and philosophy of ancient Greece had done much, by softening their early rudeness ere it chilled their early feeling, to mould them to the higher purposes of art. Christian art too, relinquishing at last her long attachment to traditional types and conventional treatment, was willing to exchange a fruitless opposition to the graces and beauties of ancient art, for a bold attempt to enlist them in her service."

In truth, when we examine the character and the times of those men who have left the stamp of their genius most deeply on the mind or destinies of mankind, we generally find a providential adaptation of the one to the other. So was it with the greatest masters of art. Had Michael Angelo appeared a century sooner, he would have found the public unprepared, by a gradual advance of naturalism, for the revolution which he was destined to bring about. They would have seen in him the terrible, without perceiving how much truth accompanied it. Deprived of the sympathy and encouragement which no wayward spirit ever more demanded, he would have failed to achieve the marvellous, and might have perhaps scarcely risen above the monstrous. Leonardo da Vinci could, in any epoch, have given sweet or intellectual qualities to beautifully moulded features, but instead of enlightening the world upon the theory and practice of his art, and developing the infant powers of mathematical engineering, he might in an earlier age have been an alchymist, in a later one the improver of spinning-jennies. Titian, who would have been cramped by the lessons of a Crivelli, grew to manhood ere the league of Cambray had curbed the golden coursers of St. Mark's; and thus he formed his beau-ideal of noble bearing ere the subjects for his pencil had ceased to be the arbiters of Italy, the merchant-princes of the world. A mind such as Raffaele's, would in all circumstances have found or created materials of beauty. He might have been the purest of devotional painters in the days of Giotto, a reformer of corrupted taste in those of Bernini; but, placed on the confines of the old manner and the new, it was his proud distinction to perfect them both.

Our antecedent remarks on the Umbrian masters have afforded us data for ascertaining the state of painting in the duchy at the advent of Raffaele. There were, indeed, few pictures within its bounds upon which the youthful aspirant might form an exalted style, but in his father he possessed an instructor competent to point out all that was worthy of study among contemporary limners, as well as to initiate him in the mechanism of his profession.[169] Too early was he deprived of this advantage,[*170] but not before he had been the companion of his parent's labours. Whilst we refuse to even his precocious genius the credit of working upon the fresco at Cagli,[171] the introduction of his portrait into it proves that he witnessed its progress. It was perhaps on similar opportunities that he imbibed, before the beautiful Madonnas of Romita and Forano, those purely devotional inspirations which are believed to have influenced his earlier and happier creations.[172]

With a mind thus prepared, and with the encouraging example of the Feltrian court, where talent and genius were sure passports to patronage and distinction, he was sent to study at Perugia soon after his father's death. This bereavement, which clouded his domestic peace not less than his artistic prospects, occurred in 1494, and was immediately followed by the loss of his maternal grandfather and grandmother, leaving him in the hands of a selfish and litigious stepmother. At this juncture, his guardian and paternal uncle Bartolomeo judiciously selected as a master for him Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino,[*173] the tender melancholy of whose candid and unimpassioned countenances contradict Vasari's wanton libels on his fair name, not less than a motto on his self-limned portrait, first noted by Mr. Ruskin, which indicates his belief that the fear of God is the foundation of artistic excellence.[*174] Whatever difference of opinion regarding the merits of that painter may have originated in the occasional inequality of the works attributed to him, no contemporary sent forth more scholars of excellence, or so faithfully maintained the integrity of Christian sentiment against ever increasing innovations. Unfortunately we are possessed of no authentic particulars regarding the interval which young Sanzio spent in a studio so congenial to his nature, or the paintings in which he had a hand; and thus those years most important to the formation of his character and style are a blank in his biography.[*175] At Perugia and elsewhere there are a few devotional pictures ascribed to him, by tradition or as signed with his initials; but even were their authenticity less doubtful, their insignificance and entire conformity to the type of Perugino would almost remove them from criticism. The admitted fact that Pinturicchio, a man of high genius, and about thirty years his senior, had recourse to the beardless Raffaele for designs, when employed to paint the cathedral-library at Siena, establishes thus early the two leading features of his after life, supereminent ability and conciliatory manners; and two of these drawings remain to prove how superior were the conceptions of the boy, to the execution of his matured comrade, excellent as that beyond all question is. He probably attended Perugino to Fano in 1497, when painting those lovely altar-pieces in S. Maria Nuova, which yield to no other production of his placid and expressive pencil, although we can scarcely accept a tradition which ascribes to the pupil some Madonna groups in the predella, upon the ground of their excelling his master's capacity.

Raffaele is supposed to have returned in 1499 to a home where he found few attractions. The moment was unpropitious for attracting the ducal patronage. Guidobaldo had retired from the Bibbiena campaign invalided and dispirited; the descent of French armies upon Italy banished from his thoughts the congenial pursuits of peace, and he repaired to Venice to take part in the coming strife. There was little inducement for the young Sanzio to establish himself at the board of an ungracious stepmother, so he set forth to try his fortunes at the neighbouring capital of Vitelli, and CittÀ di Castello was enriched by the first works undertaken on his own account. One of these, S. NicolÒ di Tolentino crowned by the Madonna, has disappeared in the rapine of the French revolutionary invasion; but another altar-picture of the Crucifixion, lately obtained from the Fesch Gallery by Lord Ward, enables us to appreciate this artist's extraordinary promise. But for the name Raphael Urbinas, this would probably be ranked with the works of Perugino in which he was assisted by his pupil; and such as best know the paintings of that master at his happiest moment, can most appreciate the compliment of classing with them the unaided though imitative efforts of a lad of seventeen. The Sposalizio of the Madonna, abstracted from CittÀ di Castello by the French, and now at Milan, is of four years later date, being marked 1504; but it was little more than a repetition of a similar work of his master, which, during the same havoc, was carried across the Alps, and remains at Caen in Normandy.[*176] The only specimen of his pencil still in the city which was the cradle of his fame, is a processional standard of the confraternita de' giustiziati in Trinity Church, representing on its two sides the Trinity with Christ on the Cross, and the Creation of Eve.[*177] Though a mere wreck, it shows a novelty of composition and a delicacy of execution already distinguishing him from the manner of Perugino.

The fame of these maiden efforts spread along the valley of the Tiber, and the novice was soon recalled to Perugia, to paint for the Oddi family an altar-piece of the Coronation of the Madonna, now with its predella in the Vatican Gallery. In rich and varied composition, it excels all antecedent representations of this favourite Umbrian theme, and establishes a decided advance beyond the standard of beauty adopted by Perugino. Now, too, he began his wonderful series of small devotional pictures, embodying the Madonna in conceptions of beauty which none other but the sainted limner of Fiesole has ever approached. On this his first emancipation from Umbria, he became acquainted with the classicism and naturalism then revolutionising art. At Siena, his perception of beauty was gratified by an exquisite Grecian statuary group of the Graces, which he transferred to his tablets, and afterwards reproduced in a picture. Tempted by the proximity of Florence, he seems to have then glanced at, rather than examined, those new elements which Masaccio and Verocchio had introduced, and which a host of able masters were enthusiastically developing.[178]

The miserable state of his native duchy, as well as his many professional engagements, fully accounts for his prolonged absence from it; but a better state of things was now restored, of which he hastened to avail himself. He reached Urbino in 1504, before midsummer of which year, the Duke had returned to enjoy a tranquil home, for the first time during above two years. The visit was well timed, and fraught with important results to the young painter, for, besides sharing his sovereign's patronage, he became known to his sister, widow of the Lord Prefect, and to her son, who was about that time formally adopted as the future Lord of Urbino. The accession of Julius II., uncle to this youth, and his partiality to art, opened up a wide field of promise to one thus favourably introduced to the Pope's nearest relatives. But these dazzling prospects, and the charms of a cultivated court, were postponed to that professional improvement for which he thirsted; and, after executing some minor commissions for Guidobaldo, the young Sanzio hastened back to the banks of the Arno, where the muse of painting was rewarding the worship of her ardent and talented votaries with revelations of high art rarely before or since vouchsafed. The favour he had already earned from the Prefectress is testified by the following recommendation, which he received from her on setting out.

This letter probably obtained him more civility than substantial benefit; as his various Florentine works attributed to this period were commissioned by private parties. Among these was Taddeo Taddei, correspondent of Bembo, and a well known friend of letters, for whom he painted the Madonna del Cardellino and another Holy Family, and of whose hospitalities and many favours he expresses a deep sense, in recommending him to his uncle's good offices at Urbino, whither the Florentine probably repaired to visit its famed court. Other kind friends and patrons were Lorenzo Nasi and Angelo Doni; but his chief object seems to have been the society and instructions of the best painters, which the acquaintance of his early master Perugino with Florence, as well as his own winning manners, must have facilitated. Leonardo da Vinci, whom Giovanni Sanzi couples with Perugino, as

"Two youths of equal years and equal love,"

was then at the height of his fame, and in direct competition with Michael Angelo, the eventual rival of Raffaele, whose energetic genius was already striding forward on his ambitious career. Fra Bartolomeo was adapting their new and advanced style to the devotional feeling which hung around his cloister in the frescoes of Beato Angelico. Domenico Ghirlandaio was dead, but his mantle had fallen on a son Ridolfo, whom the young Sanzio selected as his favourite associate, to the mutual advantage of both. In such companionship did Raffaele study the grand creations of preceding painters; borrowing from them, or from living artists, ideas and expedients which his fertile genius reproduced with original embellishments. The influence of Da Vinci may be distinctly detected on some of his Madonnas and portraits of this period,—that of the Dominican monk on others, and on his general colouring; but the fresco of the former at S. Onofrio, and many works of the latter, prove that they reciprocated the obligation, by freely adopting his design. Early prepossessions as yet kept him exempt from the contagion of mythological compositions; but in portraiture he found a new and interesting field, and several admirable heads, produced at Florence, attest his great success, as a naturalist of the most elevated caste.

In an Æsthetic view, the paintings and drawings executed by Raffaele at Florence are of infinite importance, but it would lead us much too far to examine the progressive development and naturalist tendencies which they display. We have not attempted to separate his various residences there from 1504 to 1508; for during these three years and a half, that city may be regarded as his head-quarters, varied by visits to Perugia, Bologna, and Urbino, which we shall now notice. In 1505, he was summoned to the first of these cities to execute three altar-pictures; one of which, at Blenheim, has been beautifully engraved by Gruner[*180]; another adorns the Museo Borbonico; the third, representing the coronation of the Madonna, is in the Vatican. Of the last commission some curious particulars are preserved. The nuns of Monte Luce having selected the young Sanzio, on the report of several citizens and reverend fathers, who had seen his performances, agreed to give him for the picture 120 golden ducats, and to another artist, Berto, 80 more for the carved framework and cornice, including three predella subjects; 30 ducats of the price being paid in advance. Raffaele's impatience to return to his studies soon carried him again to Florence, and a new contract for execution of the work was made in 1516; but death had removed both the abbess and the artist ere it was fulfilled, and ten years more elapsed before the picture was terminated by his pupils. The earliest attempt of Raffaele upon fresco, in the church of S. Severo, at Perugia, is dated 1505; its chief interest arises from being a first and incompleted idea of the grand composition which, originating with Orcagna and Fra Angelico, he developed in the Disputa of the Vatican Stanze. Two years later he revisited Perugia, to paint for the Baglioni one of his noblest and most elaborate altar-pictures, which, indeed, may be regarded as his first important dramatic composition. Its subject was the Entombment; the many extant sketches for which, prove the care exercised upon the cartoon, which he prepared at Florence. It is now the chef-d'oeuvre of the Borghese Gallery, and its beautifully pure predella is preserved in the Vatican. The same subject was treated by Perugino, in, perhaps, the finest of his panel pictures, which now ornaments the Pitti Gallery.

We shall not discuss whether Raffaele's acquaintance with Francia was formed by correspondence, or during a visit to Bologna, but one letter addressed by him to that charming artist is preserved, referring to much previous intercourse, and to a friendly interchange of drawings, and of their respective portraits. Their works, at all events, were mutually well known to each other, partly no doubt through Timoteo Viti, the pupil of both. It is worthy of note that Sanzio, writing to this friend after quitting Florence, the hotbed of classicism and naturalism, commends his Madonnas as "unsurpassed in beauty, in devotion, or in execution," thus showing the comparative value he attached to these respective excellences, among which "truth to nature," the favourite test of Vasari and later critics, has no place; and it is only when he comes to speak of the artist's own portrait, that he lauds it as "most beautiful, and life-like even to deception." It was this common sentiment that linked these master-minds: Raffaele was in the main a devotional painter, Francia was almost exclusively so.

The year 1506 was momentous to Urbino. In the spring Guidobaldo returned, after a long absence from his capital, occasioned by pressing solicitations of his brother-in-law the Pope, that he would remain near him. The following autumn brought the Pontiff in person to visit his relation, at whose court his Holiness spent four days. During part of this year, Raffaele is supposed by Passavant to have resided in his native city, and possibly he may there have been presented to Julius; at all events he must have become known to several members of the polished circle at Urbino, whose acquaintance ere long proved useful and honourable to him at Rome, and who were able to forward his interests, both with that Pope and his successor. Such were Giuliano de' Medici, Castiglione, Bembo, and the Cardinal Bibbiena, while the high tone of intellect and taste, which prevailed in that select society, was calculated to improve as well as gratify his noble nature. Nor was his pencil idle in the Duke's service. Our information does not enable us absolutely to decide what of his Urbino works were produced on this occasion, and which of them are referable to his former visit, but we willingly adopt Passavant's classification of the pictures he is supposed to have painted for Guidobaldo, the first three being ascribed by that author to the year 1504.

1. Christ in the Garden, with three disciples sleeping in the distance, No. VIII. of Passavant's Engravings, a Peruginesque picture, "of miniature finish" as described by Vasari, before whose time it had passed to the Camaldolese Convent at Urbino, having been gifted by Duchess Leonora to two members of that fraternity at her son's baptism. Long subsequently, a prior of the Gabrielli is said to have alienated it to his own family; and in 1844 it was purchased from the Roman prince of that name by Mr. William Coninghame, at the sale of whose interesting collection in 1849, it was acquired by Mr. Fuller Maitland of Stansted in Essex.

2. and 3. Two small pictures which, unless commissioned as ex voto offerings, belong rather to the class of romantic than devotional compositions. They represent St. George and St. Michael subduing their respective monsters, allegories of their triumphs over sin. The former of these is supposed to have been executed for Guidobaldo, and presented by him to the French King, by whom the latter was ordered as its companion. Both remain in the Louvre.

4. Another St. George slaying the Dragon with a lance, while the former one uses a sword. This picture, signed on the horse trappings Raphello V., is of especial interest to our countrymen, the Knight's knee being encircled by the Garter of England, as patron of that order: it was painted by the Duke's command in commemoration of his receiving this distinction; and in all probability was carried as a present to Henry VII. by Castiglione, in 1506, when he went to London as proxy at his master's installation. There it graced the palace of the Tudors and Stuarts until sold for £150 by the Commonwealth to Lord Pembroke. It was subsequently purchased by Catherine of Russia from the Crozat Collection, in which it is engraved.

5. and 6. Two easel pictures of the Madonna, stated by Vasari to have been commissioned for the Duke of Urbino, are traced by Passavant to the Imperial Gallery at St. Petersburg, and to M. Nieuwenhuys of Brussels.

7. The portrait of Raffaele by himself, now in the Florence Gallery, is understood to have been executed at Urbino in 1506, whence it was carried to Rome by Federigo Zucchero, and placed in the academy of St. Luke, until obtained thence by the influence and gold of Cardinal Lorenzo de' Medici. Passavant considers that the hair and eyes have been darkened by restorations, and corrects a mistake of the Canonico Crespi, who has occasioned some confusion by mistaking an old copy of it still in the Albani Palace at Urbino for a fresco, and by writing to Bottari in 1760 as if he had there discovered an original likeness of Sanzio.[*181]

The Holy Family and St. John in the Ellesmere Collection, called the Madonna del Passeggio, is alleged to have been presented by a duke of Urbino to Philip II., and by him to the Emperor. Thence it is traced through Queen Christina to the Odescalchi and Orleans Galleries. Passavant appears to consider the Penshanger Madonna to have also been painted in the duchy. To the same period are ascribed missing portraits by Sanzio of Duke Guidobaldo I. and his Duchess, as well as of Bembo, Giuliano de' Medici, and others of their court.

Though somewhat out of chronological order, we may here mention the portrait of a duke of Urbino, with those of Julius II., and a Magdalene, all said to have been from his easel, and to have belonged to the ducal family, particulars of which will be found in the list of Urbino pictures in the Appendix to our third volume. It, however, seems doubtful if he ever did portray either of his successive legitimate sovereigns; but a half-length of Lorenzo de' Medici, the usurping Duke, was purchased in Florence by the late M. Fabre about twenty-five years ago, and is now in the museum bequeathed by him to Montpellier. It is ascribed to Raffaele, and there is a good copy of it in the hall of Baroccio at the Uffizi of Florence. We have not connected any other works of his with Urbino, which, after the visit of 1506, he was not destined again to see.

Writing from Florence to his maternal uncle, on the 21st of April, 1508, he expresses his regrets for the recent death of Guidobaldo, in brief and somewhat common-place terms; and, passing to other matters, begs that the Duke's nephew and heir may be requested to recommend by letter his services to the Gonfaloniere, for employment on some frescoes then in contemplation at Florence. He desires that the favour may be asked in his own name, as essentially advantageous to his views, specially commending himself to the young Prefect as an old servant and follower. Yet it would seem that he had already made for himself a better title to such patronage, in a mural painting of the Last Supper in the refectory of S. Onofrio. The recent discovery of this precious work, after centuries of oblivion, restores to him the credit of his most important Tuscan production, and adds another to the many attractions of Florence.[*182]