The priest continued, "Here is a boy I have brought you for a pupil, and your chief claim to fame may yet be that he worked here with you in your studio." Perugino parried the thrust with a smile. He looked at the boy and was impressed with his beauty. Perugino afterwards acknowledged that the only reason he took him was because he thought he would work in well as a model.
Perugino was the greatest master of technique of his time. He had life, and life in abundance. He reveled in his work, and his enthusiasm ran over, inundating all those who were near. Courage is a matter of the red corpuscle. It is oxygen that makes every attack; without oxygen in his blood to back him, a man attacks nothing—not even a pie, much less a blank canvas. Perugino was a success; he had orders ahead; he matched his talent against titles; power flowed his way. Raphael's serious, sober manner and spiritual beauty appealed to him. They became as father and son. The methodical business plan, which is a prime aid to inspiration; the habit of laying out work and completing it; the high estimate of self; the supreme animation and belief in the divinity within—all these Raphael caught from Perugino. Both men were egotists, as are all men who do things. They had heard the voice—they had had a "call." The talent is the call, and if a man fails to do his work in a masterly way, make sure he has mistaken a lazy wish for a divine passion. There is a difference between loving the muse and lusting after her.
Perugino had been called, and before Raphael had worked with him a year, he was sure he had been called, too. The days in Perugia for Raphael were full of quiet joy and growing power. He was in the actual living world of men, and things, and useful work. Afternoons, when the sun's shadows began to lengthen towards the east, Perugino would often call to his helpers, especially Raphael, and Pinturicchio, another fine spirit, and off they would go for a tramp, each with a stout staff and the inevitable portfolio. Out along the narrow streets of the town, across the Roman arched bridge, by the market-place to the terraced hillside that overlooked the Umbrian plain, they went; Perugino stout, strong, smooth-faced, with dark, swarthy features; Pinturicchio with downy beard, merry eyes and tall, able form; and lingering behind, came Raphael. His small black cap fitted closely on his long bronze-gold hair; his slight, slender and graceful figure barely suggested its silken strength held in fine reserve—and all the time the great brown eyes, which looked as if they had seen celestial things, scanned the sky, saw the tall cedars of Lebanon, the flocks on the slopes across the valley, the scattered stone cottages, the fleecy clouds that faintly flecked the deep blue of the sky, the distant spire of a church. All these treasures of the Umbrian landscape were his. Well might he have anticipated, four hundred years before he was born, that greatest of American writers, and said, "I own the landscape!" In frescos signed by Perugino in the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety- two—a date we can not forget—we see a certain style. In the same design duplicated in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-eight, we behold a new and subtle touch—it is the stroke and line of Raphael.
The "Resurrection" by Perugino, in the Vatican, and the "Diotalevi Madonna" signed by the same artist, in the Berlin Museum, show the touch of Raphael, unmistakably. The youth was barely seventeen, but he was putting himself into Perugino's work—and Perugino was glad. Raphael's first independent work was probably done when he was nineteen, and was for the Citta di Castello. These frescos are signed, "Raphael Urbinas, 1502." Other lesser pictures and panels thus signed are found dated Fifteen Hundred Four. They are all the designs of Perugino, but worked out with the painstaking care always shown by very young artists; yet there is a subtle, spiritual style that marks, unmistakably, Raphael's Perugino period.
The "Sposalizio," done in Fifteen Hundred Four, now in the Brera at Milan, is the first really important work of Raphael. Next to this is the "Connestabile Madonna," which was painted at Perugia and remained there until Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, when it was sold by a degenerate descendant of the original owner to the Emperor of Russia for sixty-five thousand dollars. Since then a law has been passed forbidding any one on serious penalty to remove a "Raphael" from Italy. But for this law, that threat of a Chicago syndicate to buy the Pitti Gallery and move its contents to the "lake front" might have been carried out.
The Second Period of Raphael's life opens with his visit to Florence in Fifteen Hundred Four. He was now twenty-one years of age, handsome, proud, reserved. Stories of his power had preceded him, and the fact that for six years he had worked with Perugino and been his confidant and friend made his welcome sure.
Leonardo and Michelangelo were at the height of their fame, and no doubt they stimulated the ambition of Raphael more than he ever admitted. He considered Leonardo the more finished artist of the two. Michelangelo's heroic strength and sweep of power failed to win him. The frescos of Masaccio in the Church of Santa Carmine in Florence he considered better than any performance of Michelangelo: and as a Roland to this Oliver, we have a legend to the effect that Raphael once called upon Michelangelo and the master sent down word from the scaffold, where he was at work, that he was too busy to see visitors, and anyway, he had all the apprentices that he could look after!
How much this little incident biased Raphael's opinion concerning Michelangelo's art we can not say: possibly Raphael could not have told, either. But such things count, I am told, for even Doctor Johnson thought better of Reynolds' work after they had dined together.
It seems that Fra Bartolomeo was one of the first and best friends Raphael had at Florence. The monk's gentle spirit and his modest views of men and things won the young Umbrian; and between these two there sprang up a friendship so firm and true that death alone could sever it.
The deep religious devotion of Bartolomeo set the key for the first work done by Raphael at Florence. Most of the time the young man and the monk lived and worked in the same studio. It was a wonderfully prolific period for Raphael; from Fifteen Hundred Four to Fifteen Hundred Eight he pushed forward with a zest and an earnestness he never again quite equaled. Most of his beautiful Madonnas belong to this period, and in them all are a dignity, grace and grandeur that lift them out of ecclesiastic art, and place them in the category of living portraits.