Behold the Madonna! her face brightens with innocence; a form above the female size, and the calmness of her mien, make her appear as already beatified: she has that silent awfulness which the ancients spread over their deities. How grand, how noble is her Contour!
The child in her arms is elevated above vulgar children, by a face darting the beams of divinity through every smiling feature of harmless childhood.
St. Barbara kneels, with adoring stillness, at her side: but being far beneath the majesty of the chief figure, the great artist compensated her humbler graces with soft enticing charms.
The Saint opposite to her is venerable with age. His features seem to bear witness of his sacred youth.
The veneration which St. Barbara declares for the Madonna, expressed in the most sensible and pathetic manner, by her fine hands clasped on her breast, helps to support the motion of one of St. Sixtus’s hands, by which he utters his extasy, better becoming (as the artist judiciously thought, and chose for variety’s sake) manly strength, than female modesty.
Time, ’tis true, has withered the primitive splendour of this picture, and partly blown off its lively colours; but still the soul, with which the painter inspired his godlike work, breathes life through all its parts.
Let those that approach this, and the rest of Raphael’s works, in hopes of finding there the trifling Dutch and Flemish beauties, the laboured nicety of Netscher, or Douw, flesh ivorified by Van der Werf, or even the licked manner of some of Raphael’s living countrymen; let those, I say, be told, that Raphael was not a great master for them.