Raphael came to Rome before September 1508, for on the 5th of that month he sent a letter from the city of the popes to Francia at Bologna, whom he had probably met at Urbino. It must have been an intoxicating experience for the young master to find himself suddenly surrounded by the wonders of the classic world which at that time dominated the whole world of thought so that Christianity itself became permeated with Paganism; and to be as suddenly raised from the modest position, which in Florence had made him look with awe and veneration upon Michelangelo and Lionardo, to independent responsibility, as the compeer of the greatest of his calling. From the very first Pope Julius II. seems to have placed the utmost confidence in the newcomer, and the manner in which Raphael accomplished the first task set to him by his mighty patron not only justified this confidence but apparently made the Pope dissatisfied with much of the decorative work that had been executed in the Vatican rooms before the advent of the Urbinate.

Julius II.'s hatred of his predecessor, Alexander VI., had made it distasteful for him to live in the apartments that had been occupied by the Borgia Pope, so that he decided, in 1507, to move into the upper rooms of the Vatican, which, under the pontificate of Nicholas V., had been decorated by Pier dei Franceschi and Bramantino. These frescoes, however, did not find favour with the new Pope, who enlisted the services of Perugino, Peruzzi, Sodoma, Signorelli, and Pinturicchio for the redecoration of the Stanze, and finally entrusted Raphael with the painting of four medallions in Sodoma's ceiling in the first room, the Camera della Signatura. There has been some divergence of opinion as to the use of this room, but the subjects of the decorative scheme clearly point towards its being originally intended for a library. The allegorical figures of Theology, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Poetry with which Raphael filled the four medallions of the vaulted ceiling, were often used for the decoration of libraries during the late Renaissance; and the frequent occurrence of books in all the compositions lends further probability to this theory.

So delighted was Julius II. with the manner in which Raphael had acquitted himself of his first commission, that he, forthwith, charged him with the decoration of the entire suite of four rooms, and ruthlessly decreed the destruction of all the fresco-work previously done by other hands. But Raphael, in his hour of victory, gave proof of that generous and amiable disposition which endeared him to all with whom he came in contact. He prevailed upon his impetuous employer to save some of the work of Baldassare Peruzzi and of Perugino, and Sodoma's ceiling decoration in the Camera della Signatura. A series of heads by Bramantino, "so beautiful and so perfectly executed, that the power of speech alone was required to give them life," had to go, but before their destruction Raphael had them copied by one of his assistants. After his death these copies were presented by Giulio Romano to Paolo Giovio, and it is more than probable that they are identical with the "Bramantino" portraits from the Willett collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and at South Kensington. Sir Caspar Pardon Clarke, the director of the former institution, at least favours this theory which I first advanced in the New York Herald in 1905.

But to return to Raphael's work in the Camera della Signatura, the thought and knowledge and learning displayed in the whole scheme either prove that the young master rapidly fell into line with the intellectual movement of his day, or that he wisely sought the advice of those who stood at the head of this movement. Indeed, we know of a letter in which he asks the poet Ariosto to advise him about certain details. Moreover, the Pope himself, no doubt, suggested his own ideas to his favourite painter; whilst the cultured Cardinal Bibbiena, Count Baldassare Castiglione, and the famous humanist Pietro Bembo, his intimate friends, were ever at his disposal, and Bramante probably assisted him in designing the architectural setting to his groups. Raphael himself, though extraordinarily receptive, and better able than anybody else to clothe an idea in the most perfect pictorial forms, was not a man of learning. With Dante's and Petrarch's poetry he must have been made familiar in his father's house. He had probably dipped into the writings of Marsilio Ficino, and also acquired a knowledge of the rudiments of classic lore; but that he never mastered the Latin tongue, which was then a sine qu non of all real culture and learning, is clearly evident from the fact that in the closing years of his life, when he held the appointment of inspector of antiquities, he had to enlist the learned humanist Andrea Fulvio to translate for him the Latin inscriptions on classic ruins.

In the Camera della Signatura, Raphael's entire decoration has the same sense of orderly arrangement, the same unity of conception in the endless variety of motif and incident, as each individual fresco of the scheme. On the pendentives, which connect the ceiling medallions with the large frescoes on the walls, he painted the "Fall of Man" next to "Theology," the "Judgment of Solomon" next to "Law," the "Triumph of Apollo over Marsyas" to accompany "Poetry," and an allegorical representation of "Astronomy" (or "Natural Science") to go with "Philosophy." After an enormous amount of preparatory work he proceeded to fill the large wall under "Theology" with the wonderful monumental fresco known as the "Disputa del Sacramento," which, far from representing a dispute, shows the confessors and saints and fathers of the Church (and among them Dante, Savonarola, and Fra Angelico) united in acknowledging the triumph of the Church and the miracle of the Eucharist.

On the opposite wall, under "Philosophy," is the so-called "School of Athens," in which, in accordance with the contradictory spirit of the age, the philosophic systems of the ancient world are glorified in the same manner as is Christianity in the "Disputa." In that nobly-arranged group of philosophers, Raphael's friends and contemporaries—Bramante, Lionardo, Castiglione, Francesco della Rovere, Federigo Gonzaga, Sodoma, the artist himself, and many others—figure in the guise of Euclid, Plato, Zoroaster, and other sages. Raphael's compositional skill was not baffled by the awkward intrusion of large door-frames into the space of the remaining two walls, on one of which, under the Poetry medallion, he depicted "Parnassus," with the muses and poets (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto, Boccaccio, Tebaldeo, Sappho, &c.) grouped around Apollo, who plays a viol instead of the customary lyre. Above the door on the last wall are allegorical figures of Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance, and at the sides "Justinian delivering the Pandects," and "Gregory IX." (impersonated by Julius II.) promulgating the Decretals. The entire room was finished before November 1511.

It was probably in the same year that Raphael painted the magnificent portrait of Julius II. at the Pitti Palace, stern of feature and careworn, as he well might have appeared at this time of political disaster culminating in the loss of Bologna. But when Raphael set about the decoration of the "Stanza of Heliodorus," the Pope's star was again in the ascendant, and his policy had achieved the signal triumph of defeating the French and driving them out of the country. The subjects chosen for the decoration of this room are in consequence more or less directly connected with these events, especially the fresco from which the apartment derives its name: the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem"—an obvious allusion to the expulsion of the French forces. The fresco is remarkable for the effective contrast of the tumultuous dramatic movement on the right, and the stately repose of the group on the left, around the majestically enthroned figure of Pope Julius II.

The same potentate of the Church appears kneeling opposite the officiating priest in the fresco of the "Mass of Bolsena," which illustrates the miracle of drops of blood appearing from the Host before the eyes of the priest who doubts the dogma of the transubstantiation, an event which has led to the institution of the Corpus Christi celebration. The fresco was probably inspired by Julius himself, who had visited the chapel of Bolsena on his campaign against Bologna, and perhaps made a vow on this occasion to commemorate his visit by a votive offering. This "Mass of Bolsena" fresco is remarkable for the almost Venetian glow of warm colour, a result, no doubt, of the knowledge imparted to Raphael by Sebastiano del Piombo, who had come to Rome from Venice in 1511. The wall opposite illustrates the "Liberation of St. Peter from Prison," which is, however, not an allusion, as has been suggested, to Leo X.'s escape from French captivity, since it was begun under the rÉgime of Julius II., who more probably intended it to signify the Deliverance of the Church. On the last wall is depicted the "Retreat of Attila before St. Leo," with Leo X., who had succeeded Julius II. in 1513, impersonating his namesake, but there is little of Raphael's handiwork in this fresco, the execution of which is almost entirely due to his assistants. The decoration of this stanza was completed in 1514, a year which brought further honours and duties to Raphael who was then appointed to succeed Bramante as architect of St. Peter's.

PLATE VII.—PUTTO WITH GARLAND

(In the Academy of St. Luca, Rome)

The fresco of a putto, now at the Academy of St. Luca in Rome, is the only fragment that is left to the world of all the decorative work executed by Raphael for the corridor leading from the famous Stanze of the Vatican to the Belvedere. It probably belonged to a shield bearing the papal arms, and is a graceful and characteristic example of the master's treatment of the form of children which he loved to introduce into his compositions.