Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Pietro Perugino was chosen, an artist who had one of the largest schools in Italy, and who was noted especially for his coloring and profound feeling. It is said that when he examined the sketches of the boy, he exclaimed, "Let him be my pupil: he will soon become my master."

Perugino had been a follower of Savonarola, but after he had seen that good man put to death, he gave up his faith in God and man. When he was on his death-bed, he refused to see a confessor, saying, "I wish to see how a soul will fare in that Land, which has not been confessed."

For nine years Raphael worked under Perugino at Perugia, studying perspective and every department of art, and winning the love of both master and pupils. When he was seventeen, Passavant, in his life of Raphael, says, the young artist painted his first works, his master being in Florence: a banner for the church of the Trinita of Città di Castello, and the "Crucifixion." The banner has the "Trinity" on one sheet of canvas, and the "Creation of Man" on the other. The "Crucifixion" was bought by Cardinal Fesch at Rome, and at the sale of his paintings, in 1845, was purchased for about twelve thousand five hundred dollars. It is now in Earl Dudley's collection.

About this time the "Coronation of the Virgin" was painted for Madonna Maddalina degli Oddi, a lady of great influence, who obtained for Raphael several commissions, concerning which he expresses great joy in his letters. How many are willing to employ an artist after he is famous; how few before! A woman had the heart and the good sense to help him in these early years, and she helped the whole art world thereby.

This picture was kept in the Franciscan church at Perugia until 1792, when it was sent to Paris, but was restored to Italy by the treaty of 1815, and is now in the Vatican.

For a friend of Perugia he painted the beautiful Connestabile Madonna. "The mother of the Saviour," says Passavant, "a figure of virginal sweetness, is walking in the country, in early spring, when the trees are still bare, and the distant mountains are covered with snow. She is walking along pensively, reading in a little book, in which the child in her arms also looks attentively. Nothing could be found more exquisite. Everything in it shows that Raphael must have devoted himself to it with especial ardor."

This picture, only six and three-fourths inches square, was sold in 1871 to the Emperor of Russia for sixty-six thousand dollars.

Raphael left the studio of Perugino in the beginning of 1504, before he was twenty-one, and painted for the Franciscans, at Città di Castello, the "Marriage of the Virgin," now the chief ornament of the Brera gallery at Milan, and called the "Sposalizio." "The Virgin is attended by five women, and St. Joseph by five young men who were once Mary's suitors. The despair of the lovers is shadowed forth by the reeds they hold; they will never flower; and the handsomest youth is breaking his across his knees."

Grimm says of this picture, "Next to the Sistine Madonna, it may be considered Raphael's most popular work. In the figures of this composition we recognize types of all the different ages of man, which allow every one who stands before it, whether young or old, to feel as if the artist had been the confidant of all the thoughts and feelings appropriate to his period of life.... Raphael's elegance obtrudes itself nowhere, as with other artists is so often the case. Beside this, the harmony of his colors, which, although hitting against one another almost sharply, still have the effect of a bed of flowers whose varied hues combine agreeably. A youthful delight in the brilliancy of color is apparent, which later yielded to a different taste. Like Dürer, Raphael might have confessed, in his ripest years, that while young he loved a certain garishness of coloring, such as he had afterward renounced."

Raphael now returned to Urbino, where he painted for the reigning duke, "St. George slaying the Dragon" and "St. Michael attacking Satan." He made many friends among the noted people of the court, but, full of ambition, and having heard of the works of Da Vinci and Michael Angelo at Florence, he was extremely anxious to go to that city. A lady, as previously, took interest in the boyish artist, and wrote to Pietro Soderini, the Gonfaloniere of Florence, the following letter of introduction:—