He urged nothing, yet won all things by the force of his loving and sympathetic mind. "How is it, dear Cesare that we live in such good friendship, but that in the art of painting we show no deference to each other?" he asked of Cesare da Sesto, who was Da Vinci's greatest pupil.
In discussing the great ones of the earth, Herman Grimm, son of the collector of fairy tales, says: "Can we mention a violent act of Raphael's, Goethe's or Shakespeare's? No, it is restful only to recall these wonderful men."
One of Raphael's most beautiful Virgins was modeled from a beautiful flower-girl whom he loved, "La Belle Jardinière."
Raphael as well as Michael Angelo was summoned by Pope Julius II., but how different were the two occasions! Michael Angelo had stood with dogged, gloomy self-assertiveness before the pope, head covered, knee unbent. Uncompromising, while yet no injury had been done him, resentful before he had received a single cause for resentment, the attitude was typical of his art and his unhappy life.
When Raphael appeared, his bent knee, his "chestnut locks falling upon his shoulders, the pope exclaimed: ' He is an innocent angel. I will give him Cardinal Bembo for a teacher, and he shall fill my walls with historical pictures.'" The artist's behaviour was no sign of servility, but the simple recognition of forms and customs which the people themselves had made and by which they had decided they should graciously be bound. The attitude of Angelo was not heroic but vulgar; that of Raphael not servile, but in good taste, showing a reasonable mind.
Pope Julius had summoned Raphael for a special reason. Alexander VI., his predecessor in the Vatican, had been a depraved man. The fair and virile Julius had a healthy sentiment against occupying rooms which must continually remind him of the notorious Alexander's mode of life. Some one suggested that he have all the portraits of the former pope removed, but Julius declared: "Even if the portraits were destroyed, the walls themselves would remind me of that Simoniac, that Jew!" The word 'Jew' was then execrated by all Christians, for the world was not yet Christian enough to know better.
Raphael was summoned to decorate the Vatican, that Julius might have a place which reminded him not at all of Alexander. It is said that when Raphael had completed one of his masterpieces the pope threw himself upon the ground and cried, "I thank Thee, God, that Thou hast sent me so great a painter!"
While at work upon his first fresco at the Vatican--"La Disputa," the dispute over the Holy Sacrament--Raphael met a woman with whom he fell deeply in love. Her father was a soda manufacturer and her name was Margherita. Missirini relates this incident in Raphael's career.
"She lived on the other side of the Tiber. A small house, No. 20, in the street of Santa Dorothea, the windows of which are decorated with a pretty frame work of earthenware, is pointed out as the house where she was born.
"The beautiful girl was very frequently in a little garden adjoining the house, where, the wall not being very high, it was easy to see her from the outside. So the young men, especially artists--always passionate admirers of beauty--did not fail to come and look at her, by climbing up above the wall.