This man, who by universal consent was the greatest painter that ever lived, was about nine years old when Columbus discovered America. According to tradition he died on his birthday at the age of thirty-seven in 1520. In less than two decades of active artist life he had painted a series of pictures that were a triumph even in that glorious period of marvellous artistic accomplishment. They have been the subject of loving study and affectionate admiration ever since. Many of them have been the despair of the artists who came after him. But Raphael is not an artists' artist in any exclusive sense of the word. He is as popular an idol with those who confess to having no critical knowledge of art as he is the hopeless model of those whose lives are devoted to art.
RAPHAEL, DRAWING OF SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS (tapestry, VATICAN)
Unlike many a genius, though his family was poor his early years were surrounded by conditions all favorable for the development of his talents. Raphael is his baptismal name and his family name was Santi. (The name Sanzio often attributed to him has no warrant in history.) His father Giovanni Santi filled the post of art expert, so far as that office was formally constituted at that time, to Duke Frederick, [{4}] reigning Prince of Urbino, and it was here that Raphael was born. The Duke was one of the most distinguished and perhaps the most discriminating of the great Renaissance patrons of art as well as of letters, and a series of well-known painters, among them Piero della Francesca, Melozzo da Forli and Justus of Ghent, were in his service at this time. Duke Frederick's interest in everything artistic had made the capital of his little principality one of the most important art centres of this time and his palace is still the Mecca for visitors to Italy who are interested in the development of art, for it possesses some of the great masterpieces of the Renaissance painters. Raphael in his boyhood had in a more limited way almost as favorable surroundings as Michelangelo enjoyed in Florence, but with his father's favor of his studies instead of the opposition that this Florentine contemporary encountered. Urbino was indeed almost as much of a centre of intellectual influence and progress at this time as the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, at which Michelangelo was brought up. It was at Urbino that Baldassare Castiglione wrote "Il Cortigiano," the book of The Gentleman, the elegant setting forth of what was represented by that term in the Renaissance period.
When Raphael was about eleven his father died, but fortunately the maternal uncle under whose guardianship he passed was quite as favorable to art as his father had been. Yielding to the wishes of the boy he permitted him to enter the studio of Timoteo Viti, a pupil of the artist Francia, who had lately returned from his studies in other portions of Italy to take up his residence in his native country. During the next few years Raphael devoted himself to that training in drawing which was to mean so much for him. Just about a century ago a sketchbook was found, now in the Academy of Venice, having been purchased for the city, in which there are over a hundred pen-and-ink drawings of various pictures copied by Raphael, and competent critics declare that the masterly genius of the artist can already be recognized in them.
Besides these he painted a series of pictures in Timoteo's studio. Some of these have been preserved. Probably the best known is "St. George and St. Michael," now in the Louvre, though the "Dream of the Knight" in the National Gallery, [{5}] London, has been the admiration of young folk particularly for many generations. There are some who claim that the most charming of these early pictures painted at Urbino is the "Three Graces of the Tribune of Chantilly."
RAPHAEL, DREAM OF THE KNIGHT
After this Raphael studied for a time, probably for some four years, with Perugino at Perugia. This period of his life is mainly interesting from the fact that while he acquired Perugino's technique, Raphael went far beyond his master, though for a time his development was probably hindered rather than helped by that master's influence. Only one of the paintings made at Perugia, "The Coronation of the Virgin," painted for the Franciscans of that city, and now to be seen in the Vatican, reveals as art critics declare the real genius of Raphael shining through and above the qualities that he had borrowed from his Perugian master.