RAPHAEL (1483-1520). Raphael Sanzio was the son of Giovanni Santi, a painter of some repute in the ducal city of Urbino, situated among the Apennines on the borders of Tuscany and Umbria. For many years both before and after the birth of Raphael the city of Urbino was one of the chief centres in Italy of intellectual and artistic activity, thanks to its highly cultured rulers, Duke Federigo II. of Montefeltro and his son Guidobaldo, who succeeded him in 1482, the year before Raphael was born. The ducal residence of Urbino, built by Federigo II., even now one of the most magnificent palaces in Italy, was lavishly adorned with works of art of every class—frescos, panel-pictures, tapestries, tarsia-work, stucco-reliefs, and sculpture—executed for the duke by some of the chief Italian artists of his time, and contained a collection of oil-paintings by the Van Eycks and other celebrated Flemish painters. Giovanni Santi was a welcome guest at this miniature but splendid court, and the rich treasures which the palace contained, familiar to Raphael from his earliest years, were a very important item among the various influences which formed and fostered his early love for art. It may not perhaps be purely fanciful to trace Raphael’s boyish admiration of the oil-paintings of Jan Van Eyck and Justus of Ghent in the miniature-like care and delicacy with which some of his earliest works, such as the Knight’s Dream, were executed.

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. From his father, too, Raphael learned much of the religious sentiment and grace of motive which are specially conspicuous in his earlier paintings. The altar-piece painted by Giovanni for the church of Gradara, and a fresco, now preserved in the Santi house at Urbino, are clearly prototypes of some of Raphael’s most graceful paintings of the Madonna and Child. On the death of his father in 1494 young Raphael was left in the care of his stepmother (his own mother, Magia Ciarla, having died in 1491) and of his uncle, a priest called Bartolomeo. First or Perugian Period .—In what year Raphael was apprenticed to Perugino and how the interval before that was spent are matters of doubt. Vasari’s statement that he was sent to Perugia during his father’s lifetime is certainly a mistake. On the whole it appears most probable that he did not enter Perugino’s studio till the end of 1499, as during the four or five years before that Perugino was mostly absent from his native city. As was the case with every one with whom Raphael came in contact, the Perugian master was fascinated by the charm of his manner and delighted by his precocious ability, and seems to have devoted special pains to his artistic education. The so-called Sketch Book of Raphael in the academy of Venice contains studies apparently from the cartoons of some of Perugino’s Sistine frescos, possibly done as practice in drawing.

This celebrated collection of thirty drawings, now framed or preserved in portfolios, bears signs of having once formed a bound book, and has been supposed to be a sketch-book filled by Raphael during his Perugian apprenticeship. Many points, however, make this tempting hypothesis very improbable; the fact that the drawings were not all originally on leaves of the same size, and the miscellaneous character of the sketches—varying much both in style and merit of execution—seem to show that it is a collection of studies by different hands, made and bound together by some subsequent owner, and may contain but very few drawings by Raphael himself.

Before long Raphael appears to have been admitted to take a share in the execution of paintings by his master;

and his touch can with more or less certainty be traced in some of Perugino’s panels which were executed about 1502. Many of those who, like Messrs Crowe and Cavalcasene, adopt the earlier date of Raphael’s apprenticeship believe that his hand is visible in the execution of the beautiful series of frescos by Perugino in the Sala del Cambio, dated 1500; as does also M. Muntz in his excellent Raphael, sa Vie, Paris, 1881, in spite of his accepting the end of 1499 as the period of Raphael’s first entering Perugino’s studio,—two statements almost impossible to reconcile. Considering that Raphael was barely seventeen when these frescos were painted, it is hardly reasonable to attribute the finest heads to his hand; nor did he at an early age master the difficulties of fresco buono. The Resurrection of Christ in the Vatican and the Diotalevi Madonna in the Berlin Museum are the principal pictures by Perugino in parts of which the touch of Raphael appears to be visible, though any real certainty on this point is unattainable.

About 1502 Raphael began to execute independent works; four pictures for churches at Città di Castello were probably the earliest of these, and appear to have been painted in the years 1502-4. The first is a guild-banner painted on one side with the Trinity, and below, kneeling figures of S. Sebastian and S. Rocco; on the reverse is a Creation of Eve, very like Perugino in style, but possessing more grace and breadth of treatment. These are still in the church of S. Trinità. Also for Città di Castello were the coronation of S. Niccolo Tolentino, now destroyed, though studies for it exist at Oxford and Lille (Gaz. d. B. Arts, 1878, i. p. 48), and the Crucifixion, now in the Dudley collection, painted for the church of S. Domenico, and signed RAPHAEL VRBINAS P. It is a panel 8 feet 6 inches high by 5 feet 5 inches wide, and contains noble figures of the Virgin, St John, St Jerome, and St Mary Magdalene. The fourth painting executed for this town, for the church of S. Francesco, is the exquisitely beautiful and highly finished Sposalizio, now in the Brera at Milan, signed and dated RAPHAEL VRBINAS MDIIII. This is closely copied both in composition and detail from Perugino’s painting of the same subject now at Caen, but is far superior to it in sweetness of expression and grace of attitude. The Temple of Jerusalem, a domed octagon with outer ambulatory in Perugino’s picture, is reproduced with slight alterations by Raphael, and the attitudes and grouping of the figures are almost exactly the same in both. The Connestabile Madonna is one of Raphael’s finest works, painted during his Perugian period; it is a round panel; the motive, the Virgin reading a book of hours, is a favourite one with him, as it was with his father Giovanni. This lovely picture was lost to Perugia in 1871, when Count Connestabile sold it to the emperor of Russia for ¿613,200.

Second or Florentine Period , 150J/.-1508 .—From 1504 to 1508 Raphael’s life was very stirring and active. In the first half of 1504 he visited Urbino, where he painted two small panels for Duke Guidobaldo, the St George and the St Michael of the Louvre. His first and for him momentous visit to Florence was made towards the end of 1504, when he presented himself with a warm letter of recommendation from his patroness Joanna della Rovere to the gonfaloniere Pier Soderini. In Florence Raphael was kindly received, and, in spite of his youth (being barely of age), was welcomed as an equal by the majority of those great artists who at that time had raised Florence to a pitch of artistic celebrity far above all other cities of the world. At the time of his arrival the whole of artistic Italy was being excited to enthusiasm by the cartoons of the battle of Anghiari and the war with Pisa, on which Da Vinci and Michelangelo were then devoting their utmost energies (see Leonardo and Michelangelo). To describe the various influences under which Raphael came and the many sources from which he drank in stores of artistic knowledge would be to give a complete history of Florentine art in the 15th century. With astonishing rapidity he shook off the mannerisms of Perugino, and put one great artist after another under contribution for some special power of drawing, beauty of colour, or grace of composition in which each happened to excel. Nor was it from painters only that Raphael acquired his enlarged field of knowledge and rapidly growing powers. Sculptors like Ghiberti and Donatello must be numbered among those whose works helped to develop his new-born style. The Carmine frescos of Masaccio and Masolino taught this eager student long-remembered lessons of methods of dramatic expression. Among his contemporaries it was especially Signorelli and Michelangelo who taught him the importance of precision of line and the necessity of a thorough knowledge of the human form. From Da Vinci he learned subtleties of modelling and soft beauty of expression, from Fra Bartolomeo nobility of composition and skilful treatment of drapery in dignified folds. The friendship between Raphael and the last of these was very close and lasted for many years. The architect Baccio d’Agnolo was another of his special friends, at whose house the young painter enjoyed social intercourse with a large circle of the chief artists of Florence, and probably learned from him much that was afterwards useful in his practice as an architect.

The transition in Raphael’s style from his first or Perugian to his second or Florentine manner is well shown in the large picture of the Coronation of the Virgin painted for Maddalena degli Oddi, now in the Vatican, one of the most beautiful that he ever produced, and especially remarkable for its strong religious sentiment,—in this respect a great contrast to the paintings of his last or Roman manner which hang near it. The exquisite grace of the angel musicians and the beauty of the faces show signs of his short visit to Florence, while the general formality of the composition and certain details, such as the fluttering ribbands of the angels, recall peculiarities of Perugino and of Pinturicchio, with whose fine picture of the same subject hung close by it is interesting to compare it. Raphael’s painting, though by far the more beautiful of the two, is yet inferior to that of Pinturicchio in the composition of the whole; an awkward horizontal line divides the upper group of the Coronation from that below, the apostles standing round the Virgin’s tomb, filled with roses and lilies (Dante, Par., xxiii. 73), while the older Perugian has skilfully united the two groups by a less formal arrangement of the figures. The predella of this masterpiece of Raphael is also in the Vatican; some of its small paintings, especially that of the Annunciation to the Virgin, are interesting as showing his careful study of the rules of perspective. Several preparatory sketches for this picture exist: fig. 1 shows a study, now at Lille, for the two principal figures,

Christ setting the crown on His mother’s head (see fig. 2). It is drawn from two youths in the ordinary dress of the time; and it is interesting to compare it with his later studies from the nude, many of which are for figures which in the future picture were to be draped, made at a time when his developed style required a more careful rendering of the human form than was necessary for the simpler and more religious manner of Perugia. It was at Florence, as Vasari says, that Raphael began serious life studies, not only from nude models but also by making careful anatomical drawings from dissected corpses and from skeletons.

His first visit to Florence lasted only a few months; in 1505 he was again in Perugia painting his first fresco, the Trinity and Saints for the Camaldoli monks of San Severo, now a mere wreck from injury and restorations. The date MDV and the signature were added later, probably in 1521. Part of this work was left incomplete by the painter, and the fresco was finished in 1521 (after his death) by his old master Perugino. It was probably earlier than this that Raphael visited Siena and assisted Pinturicchio with sketches for his Piccolomini frescos. The Madonna of S. Antonio was also finished in 1505, but was probably begun before the Florentine visit. A record of his visit to Siena exists in a sketch of the antique marble group of the Three Graces, then in the cathedral library, from which, not long afterwards, he painted the small panel of the same subject now in Lord Dudley’s collection.

In 1506 Raphael was again in Urbino, where he painted for the duke another picture of St George, which was sent to England as a present to Henry VII. The bearer of this and other gifts was Guidobaldo’s ambassador, the accomplished Baldassare Castiglione (q.v.), a friend of Raphael’s, whose noble portrait of him is in the Louvre. At the court of Duke Guidobaldo the painter’s ideas appear to have been led into a more secular direction, and to this stay in Urbino probably belong the Dudley Graces, the miniature Knight’s Dream of Duty and Pleasure in the National Gallery (London), and also the Apollo and Marsyas, sold in 1882 by Mr Morris Moore to the Louvre for ¿10,000, a most lovely little panel, painted with almost Flemish minuteness, rich in colour, and graceful in arrangement.

Towards the end of 1506 Raphael returned to Florence, and there (before 1508) produced a large number of his finest works, carefully finished, and for the most part wholly the work of his own hand. Several of these are signed and dated, but the date is frequently very doubtful, owing to his custom of using Roman numerals, introduced among the sham Arabic embroidered on the borders of dresses, so that the I’s after the V are not always distinguishable from the straight lines of the ornament. The following is a list of some of his chief paintings of this period:—the Madonna del Gran Duca (Pitti); Madonna del Giardino, 1506 (Vienna); Holy Family with the Lamb,

1506 or 1507 (Madrid); the Ansidei Madonna, 1506 or

1507 (National Gallery); theBorghese Entombment, 1507; Lord Cowper’s Madonna at Panslianger, 1508; La bella Giardiniera, 1508 (Louvre); the Eszterhazy Madonna, probably the same year; as well as the Madonna del Cardellino (Uffizi), the Tempi Madonna (Munich), the Colonna Madonna (Berlin), the Bridgew r ater Madonna (Bridgewater House), and the Orleans Madonna (Due d’Aumale’s collection). The Ansidei Madonna was bought in 1884 for the National Gallery from the duke of Marlborough for £70,000, more than three times the highest price ever before given for a picture. It was painted for the Ansidei family of Perugia as an altar-piece in the church of S. Fiorenzo, and is a work of the highest beauty in colour, well preserved, and very large in scale. The Virgin with veiled head is seated on a throne, supporting the Infant with one hand and holding a book in the other. Below stands S. Niccolo da Tolentino, for whose altar it was painted · he holds a book and a crozier, and is clad in jewelled mitre and green cope, under which appear the alb and cassock. On the other side is the Baptist, in red mantle and camel’s-hair tunic, holding a crystal cross. The rich jewellery in this picture is painted with Flemish-like minuteness. On the border of the Virgin’s robe is a date, formerly read as MDV by Passavant and others; it really is MDVI or MDVII. If the later date is the true one, the picture was probably begun a year or two before. A favourite method of grouping his Holy Families is that seen in the Madonna del Cardellino and the Bella Giar-diniera, in which the main lines form a pyramid. This arrangement is also used in the Madonna del Giardino and in the larger group, including St Joseph and St Elizabeth, known as the Canigiani Holy Family, now at Munich, one of the least graceful of all Raphael’s compositions. The Entombment of Christ, now in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, was painted during a visit to Perugia in 1507 for Lady Atalanta Baglioni, in memory of the death of her brave and handsome but treacherous son Grifonetto, who was killed in 1500 by his enemies the Oddi party. The many studies and preliminary sketches for this important picture which exist in various collections show that it cost Raphael an unusual amount of thought and labour in its composition, and yet it is quite one of his least successful paintings, especially in colour. It is, however, much injured by scraping and repainting, and appears not to be wholly by his hand. The Madonna del Baldacchino, one of the finest compositions of the Florentine period, owing much to Fra Bartolomeo, is also unsatisfactory in execution; being left unfinished by Raphael, it was completed by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, by whom the ungraceful angels of the upper part and the canopy were wholly executed, and even designed. It was painted for the Dei family as an altar-piece for their chapel in S. Spirito, Florence. The St Catherine of the National Gallery was probably painted in 1507; its cartoon, pricked for transference, is in the Louvre. In colouring it much resembles parts of the Borghese Entombment, being quiet and grey in tone. To the Florentine period belong some of his finest portraits, and it is especially in these that Da Vinci’s influence appears. The portraits of Angelo Doni and his wife Maddalena (Pitti) are vivid and carefully executed paintings, and the unknown lady with hard features (now in the Uffizi) is a masterpiece of noble realism and conscientious finish. The Czartoriski portrait, a graceful effeminate-looking youth with long hair and tapering hands, now moved to Cracow, is probably a work of this period; though worthy to rank with Raphael’s finest portraits, its authenticity has been doubted. Very similar in style is the Herrenhausen portrait, once attributed to Giovanni Bellini, but an undoubted work of Raphael, in his second manner; it also represents a young man with long hair, close shaven chin, a wide cloth hat and black dress, painted in half length. The so-called Portrait of Raphael by himself at Hampton Court is a very beautiful work, glowing with light and colour, which may possibly be a genuine picture of about 1506. It represents a pleasant-looking youth with turned-up nose, not bearing the remotest resemblance to Raphael, except the long hair and black cap common to nearly all the portraits of this time. A fine but much-restored portrait of Raphael by himself, painted at Florence, exists in the Uffizi ; it represents him at a very early age, and was probably painted during the early part of his stay in Florence.

Third or Roman Period , 1508-20 .—In 1508 Raphael was painting several important pictures in Florence; in September of that year we find him settled in Rome, from a letter addressed in the warmest terms of affectionate admiration to Francia, to whom he sent a sketch for his Adoration of the Shepherds, and promised to send his own portrait in return for that which Francia had given him. Raphael was invited to Rome by his fellow-citizen (not relation, as Vasari says) Bramante, who was then occupied in the erection of the new church of St Peter’s, the foundation-stone of which had been laid by Julius II. on 18th April 1506. At this time the love of the popes for art had already attracted to Rome a number of the chief artists of Tuscany, Umbria, and North Italy, among whom were Michelangelo, Signorelli, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Lorenzo Lotto, Peruzzi, Sodoma, and many others, and it was among this brilliant assembly that Raphael, almost at once, took a leading position. Thanks to Bramante’s friendly intervention, Julius II. (Della Rovere) soon became Raphael’s most zealous patron and friend, as did also the rich bankers Agostino Chigi (the Rothschild of his time) and Bindo Altoviti, whose portrait, at the age of twenty, now at Munich, is one of the most beautiful that Raphael ever produced.

A series of rooms in the Vatican, over the Appartamenti Borgia, were already decorated with frescos by Bonfigli, Perugino, Piero della Francesca, Andrea del Castagno, Signorelli, and Sodoma; but so rapidly had the taste of the time changed that Julius II. decided to sweep them all away and re-cover the walls with paintings in the more developed but less truly decorative style of Raphael. It was not without regret that Raphael saw the destruction of this noble series of frescos. One vault, that of the Stanza dell’ Incendio, painted by his master Perugino, he saved from obliteration; it still exists, well preserved, a most skilful piece of decorative work; and he also set his pupils to copy a number of portrait-heads in the frescos of Piero della Francesca before they were destroyed. Fig. 3 shows the positions of Raphael’s frescos in the stanze, which, both from their size and method of lighting, are very unsuited for the reception of these large pictures. The two most important rooms (A and B) are small, and have an awkward cross light from opposite windows.

Stanza della Segnatura (papal signature room), painted in 1509-11 (A on fig. 3). The first painting executed by Raphael in the stanze was the so-called Disputa, finished in 1509. It is very unlike the later oues in style, showing the commencement of transition from his Florentine to his “Roman manner”; as a »decorative work it is very superior to the other frescos; the figures are much smaller in scale, as was suited to the very moderate size of the room, and the whole is arranged mainly on one plane, without those strong effects of perspective which are so unsuited to the decorative treatment of a wall-surface. In its religious sentiment too it far excels any of the later stanze paintings, retaining much of the sacred character of earlier Florentine and Umbrian art. As a scheme of decoration it appears to have been suggested by some of the early apsidal mosaics.

Fig. 4 shows the disposition of its main masses, which seem to indicate the curved recess of an apse. Gold is largely used, with much richness of effect, while the later purely pictorial frescos have little or none.

The subject of this magnificent painting is the hierarchy of the church on earth and its glory in heaven. The angels in the upper tier and the nude cherubs who carry the books of the Gospels are among the most beautiful figures that Raphael ever painted.

The painting on the vault of this room is the next in date, and shows further transition towards the “Roman manner.” In his treatment of the whole Raphael has, with much advantage, been partly guided by the painting of Perugino’s vault in the next room (C). Though not without faults, it is a very skilful piece of decoration; the pictures are kept subordinate to the lines of the vault, and their small scale adds greatly to the apparent size of the whole. A great part of the ground is gilt, marked with mosaiclike squares, a common practice with decorative painters,—not intended to deceive the eye, but simply to give a softer texture to the gilt surface by breaking up its otherwise monotonous glare. The principal medallions in each cell of this quadripartite vault are very graceful female figures, representing Theology, Science, Justice, and Poetry. Smaller subjects, some almost miniature-like in scale, are arranged in the intermediate spaces, and each has some special meaning in reference to the medallion it adjoins; some of these are painted in warm monochrome to suggest bas-reliefs. The fine painting of the Flaying of Marsyas is interesting as showing Raphael’s study of antique sculpture: the figure of Marsyas is a copy of a Roman statue, of which several replicas exist. The very beautiful little picture of the Temptation of Eve recalls Albert Diirer’s treatment of that subject, though only vaguely. Much mutual admiration existed between Raphael and Diirer: in 1515 Raphael sent the German artist a most masterly life study of two nude male figures (now at Vienna); on it is written in Albert Diirer’s beautiful hand the date and a record of its being a gift from Raphael. It is executed in red chalk, and was a study for two figures in the Battle of Ostia (see below).

On the wall opposite the Disputa is the so-called School of Athens. In this and the succeeding frescos all notion of decorative treatment is thrown aside, and Raphael has simply painted a magnificent series of paintings, treated as easel pictures might have been, with but little reference to their architectural surroundings. The subject of this noble fresco, in contrast to that opposite, is Earthly Knowledge, represented by an assembly of those great philosophers, poets, and men of science of ancient Greece who were admitted by the church to have been not wholly without inspiration from Heaven, and by their labours to have prepared the way for the clearer light of Christianity. The central figures are Plato and Aristotle, while below and on each side are groups arranged with the most consummate skill, including the whole “ filosofica famiglia” of Dante {Infer., iv. 133-144), and a number of other leaders of thought, selected in a way that shows no slight acquaintance with the history of philosophy and science among the ancient Greeks. In this selection we may fairly suppose that Raphael was aided by Bembo, Ariosto, Castiglione, Bibbiena, or others of the crowd of scholars who at this time thronged the papal court. Many interesting portraits are introduced—Bramante as the aged Archimedes, stooping over a geometrical diagram; a beautiful fairhaired youth on the left is Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino; and on the extreme right figures of Raphael himself and Perugino are introduced (see fig. 5, below). The stately building in which these groups are arranged is taken with modifications from Bramaute’s first design for St Peter’s.

Over the window (No. 6 on fig. 3) is a group of poets and musicians on Mount Parnassus, round a central figure of Apollo; it contains many heads of great beauty and fine portraits of Dante and Petrarch. The former, as a theologian, appears also in the Disputa. Over the opposite window (No. 5) are graceful figures of the three chief Virtues, and at one side (No. 4) Gregory IX. (a portrait of Julius II.) presenting his volume of decretals to a jurist; beside him is a splendid portrait of Cardinal de’ Medici (afterwards Leo X.) before his face was spoiled by getting too stout. This painting shows the influence of Melozzo da Forli. On the other side Justinian presents his code to Trebonianus (No. 3); this is inferior in execution and appears to have been chiefly painted by pupils.

The next room (B), called La Stanza d’Eliodoro, was painted in 1511-14; it is so called from the fresco (No. 7 in fig. 3) representing the expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple (2 Macc. iii.), an allusion to the struggles between Louis XII. of France and Julius II. The whole spirit of the subjects in this room is less broad and tolerant than in the first: no pagan ideas are admitted, and its chief motive is the glorification of the pontificate, with insistence on the temporal power. The main incident of this picture is the least successful part of it: the angel visitant on the horse is wanting in dignity, and the animal is poorly drawn, as is also the case with the horses of Attila’s army in the fresco opposite. The group of women and children on the left is, however, very beautiful, and the figures of Julius II. and his attendants are most nobly designed and painted with great vigour. The tall standing figure of Marc Antonio Raimondi, as one of the pope’s bearers, is a marvellous piece of portrait painting, as is also the next figure who bears his name on a scroll—10 . RETRO . DE . FOLIARIIS . CREMONEN. Behind, Giulio Romano is represented as another papal attendant. This picture was completed in 1512. Over the window (No. 8) is the scene of the Miracle at Bolsena of 1264, when the real presence was proved to a doubting priest by the appearance of blood-stains on the Corporal (see Orvieto). Julius II. is introduced kneeling behind the altar; and the lower spaces on each side of the windows are filled with two groups, that on the left with women, that on the right with officers of the papal guard. The last group is one of the most masterly of all throughout the stanze: each face, a careful portrait, is a marvel of expression and power, and the technical skill with which the whole is painted to the utmost degree of finish, almost without any tempera touches, is most wonderful. The next fresco in date (No. 10) is that of the Repulsion of Attila from the walls of Rome by Leo I., miraculously aided by the apparitions of St Peter and St Paul; it contains another allusion to the papal quarrels with France. It was begun in the lifetime of Julius II., but was only half finished at the time of his death in 1513; thus it happens that the portrait of his successor, the Medici pope Leo X., appears twice over, first as a cardinal riding behind the pope, painted before the death of Julius II., and again in the character of S. Leo, instead of the portrait of Julius which Raphael was about to paint. Attila with his savage-looking army is not the most successful part of the fresco: the horses are very wooden in appearance, and the tight-fitting scale armour, put on in some impossible way without any joints, gives a very unreal and theatrical look to the picture. Part is the work of pupils. In 1514 he painted the Deliverance of St Feter from Prison, with a further political allusion (No. 9). It is very skilfully arranged to fit in the awkward space round the window, and is remarkable for an attempt, not much suited for fresco-painting, to combine and contrast the three different qualities of light coming from the moon, the glory round the angel, and the torches of the sentinels.

For room C Raphael designed and partly painted the Incendio del Borgo (No. 11), a fire in the Borgo or Leonine City, which was miraculously stopped by Leo IV. appearing and making the sign of the cross at a window in the Vatican. In the background is shown the façade of the old basilica of St Peter, not yet d