At no period of Raphael’s laborious life were his exertions greater than during the reign of Julius II., that is, till 1513, the year of that pontiff’s death. The room called the Camera della Segnatura, where the great artist began to work, was evidently planned by him as one design, and its four walls were appropriated to four comprehensive subjects,—theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence. The ceiling is occupied with single figures and subjects forming part of the same scheme. The subject of Theology, commonly called the Disputa, was begun the first, and the right hand of the upper part was first painted. This is evident from a certain inexperience in the mechanical process of fresco painting, which is found to disappear even in the same work. Six of these vast subjects, besides other works, were executed between 1508 and 1513, and the two last, the Miracle of Bolsena and the Heliodorus, are unsurpassed in colour, as well as in every other excellence fitted for the subject and dimensions. For richness and force of local colour these two works have often been compared to those of Titian; it should be added that they are earlier in date than the finest oil pictures of Titian, and that they are decidedly superior in colour to the frescoes by that master in Padua. The supposition of Rumohr, that Giorgione may have seen and profited by these specimens, is, however, not to be reconciled with the date of that painter’s death. The impatience of the character of Julius, who was bent on the speedy prosecution of this undertaking, makes it probable that some works attributed by Vasari to this period were executed later. The portrait of Julius, that of Bindo Altoviti, the musician in the Sciarra palace, the Madonna di Fuligno, the Madonna della Sedia, and the Vision of Ezekiel, belong however to this time. The St. Cecilia, begun in 1513, was not sent to Bologna till some years afterwards. In the last, the assistance of subordinate hands is evident; and the variety of works in which Raphael was employed under Leo X. made this practice of intrusting the execution of his designs to others more and more necessary. Unfortunately, his grand works, the frescoes of the Vatican, with the exception of two excellent specimens, the Attila and the Liberation of Peter (painted immediately after the accession of Leo), were completed very much in this way by his scholars. Even the Incendio del Borgo, so remarkable for its invention and composition, has but few traces of his own hand in the execution. The frescoes of the Vatican have often been described as exhibiting one comprehensive plan as to their meaning, but it is well known that the subjects of the Attila and the Liberation of Peter were suggested by incidents in the life of Leo, and consequently that they could not have been thought of before the accession of that pope. Of all these works the Attila is justly considered to be the most perfect example of fresco painting, and to exhibit the greatest command over the material; though produced after the death of Julius, it may be regarded as the noblest result of that impulse which the pontiff’s energy had communicated to Raphael. The character of Leo X., as a protector of art, has been perhaps sometimes too favourably represented. More educated than his predecessor, he loved the refinement which the arts and letters imparted to his court; but he had no deep interest, like Julius, in inciting such men as Raphael and Michael Angelo to do their utmost under his auspices. Whether from the indifference of Leo, or from his neglecting, as Vasari hints, to discharge his pecuniary debts to Raphael, we soon find the painter employed in various other works, and the remaining frescoes of the Vatican bear evidence of the frequent employment of other hands. Many works of minor importance in the same palace were entirely executed by his assistants.
The celebrated Cartoons were designs for tapestries, of which more than twenty of various sizes are preserved in the Vatican. The Cartoons, it may be inferred, were equally numerous, but seven only, now fit Hampton Court, remain entire. A portion of another was bequeathed by the late Prince Hoare to the Foundling Hospital, where it is now to be seen. These works owed their existence to the Pope’s love of magnificence rather than to a true taste for art; but although destined for a merely ornamental purpose, some of the designs are among the very finest of Raphael’s inventions, and a few may have been, at least in part, executed by his hand. The Ananias, the Charge to Peter, the Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, and the Paul preaching at Athens, are generally considered to have the greatest pretensions to this additional interest. The fine portrait of Leo with the Cardinals de’ Medici and de’ Rossi completes the list of larger works undertaken for the Pope, but the many designs by Raphael from classical or mythological subjects may be supposed to have been also made at the suggestion of the pontiff. In obedience to his wishes, Raphael undertook the inspection of the ancient Roman monuments, and superintended the improvements of St. Peter’s. Among the numerous and extensive works done for other employers may be mentioned the Sybils in the Chiesa della Pace, the frescoes from Apuleius’s story of Cupid and Psyche in the palace of Agostino Chigi, called the Farnesina, where the so-called Galatea was the beginning of another Cyclus from the same fable, the Madonna del Pesce, the Madonna di S. Sisto, and the Spasimo di Sicilia. Many a palace in the neighbourhood of Rome still exhibits remains of frescoes for which Raphael at least furnished the designs; and his own Casino, near the more modern Villa Borghese, may retain traces of his hand, but it is now fast falling to decay. A long list of portraits might be added to the above works, together with many interesting designs in architecture, and even some productions in sculpture. In reviewing the amazing number of works attributed to Raphael, it must not however be forgotten that many are his only in the invention, and some pictures that bear his name may have been even designed as well as finished by his imitators. The Flemish copies of Raphael are frequent, and are to be detected, among other indications, by their extreme smoothness; the contemporary imitations, especially those of the earlier style of the master, by Domenico Alfani and Vincenzo di S. Geminiano, are much less easily distinguished. The question respecting the Urbino earthenware may be considered to have been set at rest by Passeri (Storia delle pitture in Maiolica di Pesaro e di altri luoghi della Provincia Metaurense). From this inquiry, it appears, first, that the art of painting this ware had not arrived at perfection till twenty years after Raphael’s death: and secondly, that about that time Guid’ Ubaldo II. (della Rovere) collected engravings after Raphael, and even original designs by him, and had them copied in the Urbino manufactory. Battista Franco at one time superintended the execution, and one of the artists was called Raffaello del Colle; his name may perhaps occasionally be inscribed on the Urbino ware, but the initials O. F. (Orazio Fontana) are the most frequent.
The Transfiguration was the last oil picture of importance on which Raphael was employed; it was unfinished at his death, and was afterwards completed, together with various other works, by his scholars. The last and worst misstatement of Vasari cannot be passed over, for unfortunately, none of the biographer’s mistakes have been oftener repeated than that which ascribes the death of this great man to the indulgence of his passion for the Fornarina. Cardinal Antonelli was in possession of an original document, first published by Cancellieri, which assigns a different, and a much more probable, cause for Raphael’s death; it thus concludes,—“Life in him (Raphael) seemed to inform a most fragile bodily structure, for he was all mind; and moreover, his physical forces were much impaired by the extraordinary exertions he had gone through, and which it is wonderful to think he could have made in so short a life. Being then in a very delicate state of health, he received orders one day while at the Farnesina to repair to the court; not to lose time, he ran all the way to the Vatican, and arrived there heated and breathless; there the sudden chill of the vast rooms, where he was obliged to stand long consulting on the alterations of St. Peter’s, checked the perspiration, and he was presently seized with an indisposition. On his return home, he was attacked with a fever, which ended in his death.” Raphael was born and died on Good Friday. Some of his biographers have hence, through an oversight, asserted that he lived exactly thirty-seven years. He was born March 28, 1483, and died April 6, 1520. He was buried in the Pantheon, now the church of Sta. Maria ad Martyres, in a niche or chapel which he had himself endowed. His remains have been lately found there.
Quatremère de Quincy’s ‘Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Rafael, etc. Paris, 1824,’ has been improved and superseded by the notes to the Italian translation of Longhena, Milan, 1829. Pungileoni, the author of the ‘Elogio Storico di Giovanni Santi, Urbino, 1822,’ has been long employed in preparing a life of Raphael. The observations of Rumohr, in the third volume of his ‘Italienische Forschungen, Berlin, 1831,’ are original and valuable. A few interesting facts will be found in Fea’s ‘Notizie intorno Raffaele Sanzio, Rome 1822.’ The author, however, fails to prove the regularity of Leo’s payments to Raphael, since the latest document concerning the frescoes in the Stanze has the date 1514.
The engraving is from a miniature after the portrait by Raphael himself, in his first manner, cut from the stucco of a wall at Urbino, which forms the chief attraction of the Camera di’ ritratti at Florence. The head engraved by Morghen, and so generally known, represents the features of Bindo Altoviti, which do not even resemble in a single point those of Raphael. The notion arose solely from a passage in Vasari’s Lives:—‘E a Bindo Altoviti fece il ritratto suo;’ for Bindo Altoviti he did his portrait (not his own): these words were distorted by the Editor Bottari in a marginal note; but the error has been decisively exposed by Missirini and others, whose account is every where received in Italy. Nor does it appear that the Tuscans in general fell into the mistake, for the portrait now given, and not, as Bottari asserts, the Altoviti portrait, is engraved in the Museum Florentinum.
[Death of Ananias.]
KNOX.
John Knox was born in East Lothian, in 1505, probably at the village of Gifford, but, according to some accounts, at the small town of Haddington, in the grammar-school of which he received the rudiments of his education. His parents were of humble rank, but sufficiently removed from want to support their son at the University of St. Andrew’s, which Knox entered about the year 1524. He passed with credit through his academical course, and took orders at the age of twenty-five, if not sooner. In his theological reading, he was led by curiosity to examine the works of ancient authors quoted by the scholastic divines. These gave him new views of religion, and led him on to the perusal of the scriptures themselves. The change in his opinions appears to have commenced about 1535. It led him to recommend to others, as well as to practise, a more rational course of study than that prescribed by the ancient usage of the University. This innovation brought him under suspicion of being attached to the principles of the Reformation, which was making secret progress in Scotland: and, having ventured to censure the corruptions which prevailed in the Church, he found it expedient to quit St. Andrew’s in 1542, and return to the south of Scotland, where he openly avowed his adherence to the Reformed doctrines.