"We may doubt whether in the whole range of modern history, or within the compass of modern Europe, one moment or one spot could be found more singularly propitious than those which glory in Raffaele's birth. He was happy in his parentage and in his patrons, in his master and in his pupils, in his friends and in his rivals: the first misfortune of his life was its rapid and untimely close. He was late enough to profit by the example, early enough to feel the living influence of four of the greatest masters of his art, of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Giorgione, and Fra Bartolomeo. The art of painting in oil had been introduced into Italy barely half a century before his birth; its technical difficulties were already mastered, but it still awaited a master's hand to develop its latent capabilities. His short life included the Augustan age of papal Rome, the age of its splendour and magnificence, if not of its power, and he died almost before the far-off sound of the rising storm had broken the religious calm, or foretold the coming miseries of Italy. The two pontiffs whom he served out-shone the most illustrious of their predecessors in their luxurious tastes and lavish patronage of the fine arts; and these arts still served the Church, not only with the grateful zeal of favoured children, but with the earnest devotion of undoubting faith.... In the age of Raffaele, while the rich and often graceful legends of the Catholic mythology still retained their ancient hold on the popular belief, the growing taste among the learned of the day for the literature and philosophy of ancient Greece had done much, by softening their early rudeness ere it chilled their early feeling, to mould them to the higher purposes of art. Christian art too, relinquishing at last her long attachment to traditional types and conventional treatment, was willing to exchange a fruitless opposition to the graces and beauties of ancient art, for a bold attempt to enlist them in her service."
In truth, when we examine the character and the times of those men who have left the stamp of their genius most deeply on the mind or destinies of mankind, we generally find a providential adaptation of the one to the other. So was it with the greatest masters of art. Had Michael Angelo appeared a century sooner, he would have found the public unprepared, by a gradual advance of naturalism, for the revolution which he was destined to bring about. They would have seen in him the terrible, without perceiving how much truth accompanied it. Deprived of the sympathy and encouragement which no wayward spirit ever more demanded, he would have failed to achieve the marvellous, and might have perhaps scarcely risen above the monstrous. Leonardo da Vinci could, in any epoch, have given sweet or intellectual qualities to beautifully moulded features, but instead of enlightening the world upon the theory and practice of his art, and developing the infant powers of mathematical engineering, he might in an earlier age have been an alchymist, in a later one the improver of spinning-jennies. Titian, who would have been cramped by the lessons of a Crivelli, grew to manhood ere the league of Cambray had curbed the golden coursers of St. Mark's; and thus he formed his beau-ideal of noble bearing ere the subjects for his pencil had ceased to be the arbiters of Italy, the merchant-princes of the world. A mind such as Raffaele's, would in all circumstances have found or created materials of beauty. He might have been the purest of devotional painters in the days of Giotto, a reformer of corrupted taste in those of Bernini; but, placed on the confines of the old manner and the new, it was his proud distinction to perfect them both.
Our antecedent remarks on the Umbrian masters have afforded us data for ascertaining the state of painting in the duchy at the advent of Raffaele. There were, indeed, few pictures within its bounds upon which the youthful aspirant might form an exalted style, but in his father he possessed an instructor competent to point out all that was worthy of study among contemporary limners, as well as to initiate him in the mechanism of his profession.[169] Too early was he deprived of this advantage,[*170] but not before he had been the companion of his parent's labours. Whilst we refuse to even his precocious genius the credit of working upon the fresco at Cagli,[171] the introduction of his portrait into it proves that he witnessed its progress. It was perhaps on similar opportunities that he imbibed, before the beautiful Madonnas of Romita and Forano, those purely devotional inspirations which are believed to have influenced his earlier and happier creations.[172]
With a mind thus prepared, and with the encouraging example of the Feltrian court, where talent and genius were sure passports to patronage and distinction, he was sent to study at Perugia soon after his father's death. This bereavement, which clouded his domestic peace not less than his artistic prospects, occurred in 1494, and was immediately followed by the loss of his maternal grandfather and grandmother, leaving him in the hands of a selfish and litigious stepmother. At this juncture, his guardian and paternal uncle Bartolomeo judiciously selected as a master for him Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino,[*173] the tender melancholy of whose candid and unimpassioned countenances contradict Vasari's wanton libels on his fair name, not less than a motto on his self-limned portrait, first noted by Mr. Ruskin, which indicates his belief that the fear of God is the foundation of artistic excellence.[*174] Whatever difference of opinion regarding the merits of that painter may have originated in the occasional inequality of the works attributed to him, no contemporary sent forth more scholars of excellence, or so faithfully maintained the integrity of Christian sentiment against ever increasing innovations. Unfortunately we are possessed of no authentic particulars regarding the interval which young Sanzio spent in a studio so congenial to his nature, or the paintings in which he had a hand; and thus those years most important to the formation of his character and style are a blank in his biography.[*175] At Perugia and elsewhere there are a few devotional pictures ascribed to him, by tradition or as signed with his initials; but even were their authenticity less doubtful, their insignificance and entire conformity to the type of Perugino would almost remove them from criticism. The admitted fact that Pinturicchio, a man of high genius, and about thirty years his senior, had recourse to the beardless Raffaele for designs, when employed to paint the cathedral-library at Siena, establishes thus early the two leading features of his after life, supereminent ability and conciliatory manners; and two of these drawings remain to prove how superior were the conceptions of the boy, to the execution of his matured comrade, excellent as that beyond all question is. He probably attended Perugino to Fano in 1497, when painting those lovely altar-pieces in S. Maria Nuova, which yield to no other production of his placid and expressive pencil, although we can scarcely accept a tradition which ascribes to the pupil some Madonna groups in the predella, upon the ground of their excelling his master's capacity.
Alinari
MADONNA AND CHILD
After the picture by Giovanni Santi, in the Pinacoteca of Urbino
Raffaele is supposed to have returned in 1499 to a home where he found few attractions. The moment was unpropitious for attracting the ducal patronage. Guidobaldo had retired from the Bibbiena campaign invalided and dispirited; the descent of French armies upon Italy banished from his thoughts the congenial pursuits of peace, and he repaired to Venice to take part in the coming strife. There was little inducement for the young Sanzio to establish himself at the board of an ungracious stepmother, so he set forth to try his fortunes at the neighbouring capital of Vitelli, and Città di Castello was enriched by the first works undertaken on his own account. One of these, S. Nicolò di Tolentino crowned by the Madonna, has disappeared in the rapine of the French revolutionary invasion; but another altar-picture of the Crucifixion, lately obtained from the Fesch Gallery by Lord Ward, enables us to appreciate this artist's extraordinary promise. But for the name Raphael Urbinas, this would probably be ranked with the works of Perugino in which he was assisted by his pupil; and such as best know the paintings of that master at his happiest moment, can most appreciate the compliment of classing with them the unaided though imitative efforts of a lad of seventeen. The Sposalizio of the Madonna, abstracted from Città di Castello by the French, and now at Milan, is of four years later date, being marked 1504; but it was little more than a repetition of a similar work of his master, which, during the same havoc, was carried across the Alps, and remains at Caen in Normandy.[*176] The only specimen of his pencil still in the city which was the cradle of his fame, is a processional standard of the confraternita de' giustiziati in Trinity Church, representing on its two sides the Trinity with Christ on the Cross, and the Creation of Eve.[*177] Though a mere wreck, it shows a novelty of composition and a delicacy of execution already distinguishing him from the manner of Perugino.