In an æsthetic view, the paintings and drawings executed by Raffaele at Florence are of infinite importance, but it would lead us much too far to examine the progressive development and naturalist tendencies which they display. We have not attempted to separate his various residences there from 1504 to 1508; for during these three years and a half, that city may be regarded as his head-quarters, varied by visits to Perugia, Bologna, and Urbino, which we shall now notice. In 1505, he was summoned to the first of these cities to execute three altar-pictures; one of which, at Blenheim, has been beautifully engraved by Gruner[*180]; another adorns the Museo Borbonico; the third, representing the coronation of the Madonna, is in the Vatican. Of the last commission some curious particulars are preserved. The nuns of Monte Luce having selected the young Sanzio, on the report of several citizens and reverend fathers, who had seen his performances, agreed to give him for the picture 120 golden ducats, and to another artist, Berto, 80 more for the carved framework and cornice, including three predella subjects; 30 ducats of the price being paid in advance. Raffaele's impatience to return to his studies soon carried him again to Florence, and a new contract for execution of the work was made in 1516; but death had removed both the abbess and the artist ere it was fulfilled, and ten years more elapsed before the picture was terminated by his pupils. The earliest attempt of Raffaele upon fresco, in the church of S. Severo, at Perugia, is dated 1505; its chief interest arises from being a first and incompleted idea of the grand composition which, originating with Orcagna and Fra Angelico, he developed in the Disputa of the Vatican Stanze. Two years later he revisited Perugia, to paint for the Baglioni one of his noblest and most elaborate altar-pictures, which, indeed, may be regarded as his first important dramatic composition. Its subject was the Entombment; the many extant sketches for which, prove the care exercised upon the cartoon, which he prepared at Florence. It is now the chef-d'œuvre of the Borghese Gallery, and its beautifully pure predella is preserved in the Vatican. The same subject was treated by Perugino, in, perhaps, the finest of his panel pictures, which now ornaments the Pitti Gallery.
Alinari
MARGHERITA “LA FORNARINA”
After the picture by Raphael called La Donna Velata in the Pitti Gallery, Florence
We shall not discuss whether Raffaele's acquaintance with Francia was formed by correspondence, or during a visit to Bologna, but one letter addressed by him to that charming artist is preserved, referring to much previous intercourse, and to a friendly interchange of drawings, and of their respective portraits. Their works, at all events, were mutually well known to each other, partly no doubt through Timoteo Viti, the pupil of both. It is worthy of note that Sanzio, writing to this friend after quitting Florence, the hotbed of classicism and naturalism, commends his Madonnas as "unsurpassed in beauty, in devotion, or in execution," thus showing the comparative value he attached to these respective excellences, among which "truth to nature," the favourite test of Vasari and later critics, has no place; and it is only when he comes to speak of the artist's own portrait, that he lauds it as "most beautiful, and life-like even to deception." It was this common sentiment that linked these master-minds: Raffaele was in the main a devotional painter, Francia was almost exclusively so.
The year 1506 was momentous to Urbino. In the spring Guidobaldo returned, after a long absence from his capital, occasioned by pressing solicitations of his brother-in-law the Pope, that he would remain near him. The following autumn brought the Pontiff in person to visit his relation, at whose court his Holiness spent four days. During part of this year, Raffaele is supposed by Passavant to have resided in his native city, and possibly he may there have been presented to Julius; at all events he must have become known to several members of the polished circle at Urbino, whose acquaintance ere long proved useful and honourable to him at Rome, and who were able to forward his interests, both with that Pope and his successor. Such were Giuliano de' Medici, Castiglione, Bembo, and the Cardinal Bibbiena, while the high tone of intellect and taste, which prevailed in that select society, was calculated to improve as well as gratify his noble nature. Nor was his pencil idle in the Duke's service. Our information does not enable us absolutely to decide what of his Urbino works were produced on this occasion, and which of them are referable to his former visit, but we willingly adopt Passavant's classification of the pictures he is supposed to have painted for Guidobaldo, the first three being ascribed by that author to the year 1504.
1. Christ in the Garden, with three disciples sleeping in the distance, No. VIII. of Passavant's Engravings, a Peruginesque picture, "of miniature finish" as described by Vasari, before whose time it had passed to the Camaldolese Convent at Urbino, having been gifted by Duchess Leonora to two members of that fraternity at her son's baptism. Long subsequently, a prior of the Gabrielli is said to have alienated it to his own family; and in 1844 it was purchased from the Roman prince of that name by Mr. William Coninghame, at the sale of whose interesting collection in 1849, it was acquired by Mr. Fuller Maitland of Stansted in Essex.
2. and 3. Two small pictures which, unless commissioned as ex voto offerings, belong rather to the class of romantic than devotional compositions. They represent St. George and St. Michael subduing their respective monsters, allegories of their triumphs over sin. The former of these is supposed to have been executed for Guidobaldo, and presented by him to the French King, by whom the latter was ordered as its companion. Both remain in the Louvre.