Titian was six years old when Raphael was born, and he continued to live and work for fifty-six years after Raphael had passed away.
It was a cause of grief to Michelangelo, even to the day of his death, that he and Raphael had not been close, personal and loving friends, as indeed they should have been.
The art-world was big enough for both. Yet Rome was divided into two hostile camps: those who favored Raphael; and those who had but one prophet, Michelangelo. Busybodies rushed back and forth, carrying foolish and inconsequential messages; and these strong yet gentle men, both hungering for sympathy and love, were thrust apart.
When Raphael realized the end was nigh, he sent for Perugino, and directed that he should complete certain work. His career had begun by working with Perugino, and now this friend of a lifetime must finish the broken task and make good the whole. He bade his beloved pupils, one by one, farewell; signed his will, which gave most of his valuable property to his fellow-workers; and commended his soul to the God who gave it. He died on his birthday, Good Friday, April Sixth, Fifteen Hundred Twenty, aged thirty-seven years. Michelangelo wore mourning upon his sleeve for a year after Raphael's death. And once Michelangelo said, "Raphael was a child, a beautiful child, and if he had only lived a little longer, he and I would have grasped hands as men and worked together as brothers."
LEONARDO
The world, perhaps, contains no other example of a genius so universal as Leonardo's, so creative, so incapable of self- contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of his portraits Michelangelo's personages are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's virgins are only placid children whose souls are still asleep. His beings feel and think through every line and trait of their physiognomy. Time is necessary to enter into communion with them; not that their sentiment is too slightly marked, for, on the contrary, it emerges from the whole investiture; but it is too subtle, too complicated, too far above and beyond the ordinary, too dreamlike and inexplicable. —Taine in "A Journey Through Italy"
[Illustration: Leonardo]
There is a little book by George B. Rose, entitled, "Renaissance Masters," which is quite worth your while to read. I carried a copy, for company, in the side-pocket of my coat for a week, and just peeped into it at odd times. I remember that I thought so little of the volume that I read it with a lead-pencil and marked it all up and down and over, and filled the fly-leaves with random thoughts, and disfigured the margins with a few foolish sketches.
Then one fine day White Pigeon came out to the Roycroft Shop from Buffalo, as she was passing through. She came on the two-o'clock train and went away on the four-o'clock, and her visit was like a window flung open to the azure.
White Pigeon remained at East Aurora only two hours—"not long enough" she said, "to knock the gold and emerald off the butterfly's beautiful wings."