Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/169

138 BAPHAEL. gives promise of that remarkable dra- matio power to which it not long after- wards attained. But it was some years before Raphael fully developed in Rome that unparalleled style through which be has achieved, by universal acclama- tion, the glorious title of the Prince of Painters; this is first fully developed in the Heliodorus (1512). All his styles are beautiful, all have their high attractions, but some qualities of his earlier styles owe much of their remarkable prominence to the defi- ciency of others ; the quattrocento mas- ters, generally, owe much of their glory to this accidental importance of their peculiar accomplishments. It is only in Raphael's third manner, that we feel forced to give our involuntary un- qualified approval ; and because in this all qualities are equally advanced: it displays a co-ordinate development of body and soul, passion and sentiment ; the sensuous and the spiritual have equal sway, and we have a normal art, the just representative of nature; life in its grandest and in its minutest spheres. In his first, or Perugino manner, sentiment transcends all other qua- lities ; this was comparative art infancy. Perugino and the Umbrian painters could feel strongly, but could only ex- press their feelings imperfectly; their representations were true and natural in their aim, they felt thoroughly, but they wanted the art-power, the Imow- ledge, the practical and technical skill, to put that feeling with life-like truth into their compositions; mere appo- sition and representation usurped the place of complete dramatic composi- tion, and the true indication of mind or sentiment by the corresponding out- ward expressions of the body ; nature's lesson was but half leamt In this first style, therefore, one of pure imitation as regards himself, Raphael acquired the first great essen- tial of art, sentiment, the quality aheady matured in the Umbrian SchooL But his visit to Florence showed him that this was not all that was required to perfect art, and though the Umbrian School from which Raphael prooeeded was perhaps in advance of the Floren- tine in its own sphere, the young painter of Urbino did not fiedl to per- ceive that he had much to acquire to attain to the full powers of his absorb- ing art In 1506 Michelangelo exhi- bited his celebrated Cartoon of Pisa; this must have infiuenced Raphael, though perhaps, owing to the i&iimosily which existed between Michelangelo and Perugino, and Raphaers respect for the latter, he may have suffered, himself to have been less influenced by it than he might otherwise have been. However, his slyle of form was now greatly enlarged, and his com- position became much more dramatic^ as is seen in the Entombment of Christ, in the Borghese Gallery, at Rome (1507), or the Madonna del Bal- dachino, at Florence, painted at the same time, compared with the Corona- tion of theVirgin, in the Vatican, painted about 1502, or the Sposalizio, in the Brera, painted in 1504. In Uie spring of 1508 Raphael went to Rome, and soon afterwards com- menced the Vatican Frescoes, in the so-called Stanze. The Theology, or Dispute on the Sacrament, the first completed, 1509, was stiU in his Flo- rentine manner. In the Philosophy, or School of Athens (1511), he gave the first positive indications of his third or great style, more completely deve- loped in the Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem, 1512. This great work, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, were completed at the same time; but Raphael had seen Michelangelo's work in progress, and doubtless much of his own admirable enlargement of slyle was due to the