THE HISTORY OF ART. 



oould not foil deeply to impress a young painter of raoh plastic 

 tlready emancipated by bin Florentine career, and ready 

 to proooed further in tlio game direction whenever opportunity 

 offered. Haffael set to work at Rome to infuse modern art 

 with Homo of the old Greek lightness and grace. The pr. >l\i< -t 

 was aeen in what is known as his third, or Roman style, which 

 differs from tho Florentine in its individuality and its great 

 nation of various excellences. No longer content with 

 I'.. Hi-wing his masters, Raffaol began, in his celebrated fresco of 

 1'iiilonophy, or the School of Athens," to invent a new stylo 

 >i- himself. If we compare the freedom of the figures, the 

 naturalness of tho grouping, the depth and mastery of tho per- 

 spective, and the admirable power of true and noble expression 

 displayed in this magnificent work, with any previous master- 

 piece of art even with Lionardo himself wo can see at once 



therefore difficult to decide in some oases which are really bis 

 own works. But of his undoubted compositions there are quite 

 enough to fill up tho limits of a short and marvellously indu- 

 trioos life. In tho first, or Pornginesqne style, the " Marriage 

 of the Virgin," at Milan, is the most familiar from numerous 

 engravings, and beet represent* the comparative conventionality 

 and stiffness of his boyish works, though even here it is possible 

 to see in the germ those higher qualities which afterward* 

 developed themselves under more favourable circumstance*. 

 Of his Florentine period, when his genius began first to allow 

 itself somewhat freer play, we have an excellent example in the 

 "St. Catherine" of our own National Gallery; while the 

 " Madonna," or Virgin under a canopy, of the Pitti Palace at 

 Florence may be taken as the beat Italian specimen. " The 

 School of Athena," of which we give an engraving, opened his 



PHILOSOPHY, OR THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. (&y Bof, 



what is the nature of that supreme excellence which has made 

 Raffael the greatest name among the whole roll of modern 

 painters. Whether wo look at the conception itself, in its 

 totality and in its detail, or at the technical mastery with which 

 it is expressed whether at the glorious realisation of a grand 

 philosophic epoch and of noble intellectual personalities, or at 

 the harmony of its arrangement and the perfection of its design, 

 or at the natural anatomical pose of the figures, or at the 

 drapery, the management of light, and the perspective, or at 

 the beauty and delicacy of the colouring, or at the power and 

 truth of tho touch we must acknowledge alike in every parti- 

 cular both the highest command of hand and muscle, and the 

 informing soul blended into a whole by the subtlest interfusion 

 of mental gifts and manual ability. 



At Rome, Raffael became the founder of a school, whose works 

 cannot always be absolutely distinguished from his own, while 

 many of them must have been executed under his eye, or even 

 have received numerous touches from his hand. The best- 

 known among his scholars are Giulio Romano and Caravaggio. 

 Not a few pictures by other artists have also been attributed to 

 so famous a painter either fraudulently or ignorantly, and it is 



third manner, and still necessarily remains npon the walls of 

 the Vatican, together with the other magnificent series of 

 frescoes of which it forms a part ; not all of them, however, 

 are entirely due to the pencil of the master himself. Perhaps 

 his two most famous works are the oil-paintings of " St. Cecilia," 

 at Bologna, and the " Madonna di San Sis to," in the gallery at 

 Dresden. Equally exquisite in tenderness of feeling and in 

 beauty of rendering are the well-known "Virgin and Child" 

 and the " Madonna Ansidei " in our own National Gallery. But 

 the "Transfiguration," his last work, familiar to almost every 

 one by engravings, is often considered to be the noblest pro- 

 duction of his genius in its more sublime and spiritual mood. 



One of tho best examples of BaffaeTa style which can be seen 

 in England is that displayed by the seven cartoons, which were 

 long placed npon the walls of Hampton Court Palace, but now 

 form a part of the great national treasure at South Kensington. 

 Those cartoons are not paintings in any of the recognised 

 methods, but are large coloured designs for the tapestry of the 

 Sistine Chapel at Rome, and they are executed in the large and 

 free style which suits that kind of wall-decoration. Sent to 

 Flanders as models for the tapestry-workers, they were pur- 



