WHILE Rome, with all its associations and its myriad objects of interest and beauty, had comparatively little effect upon Michelangelo, who there as elsewhere seemed clad in a mental armor of proof which blunted all weapons directed against him, it quickened the genius of Raphael and affected his style. Michelangelo copied the Faun’s mask at Lorenzo’s Academy, imitated the antique in his Cupid for a special purpose, restored several antique statues, and is said to have admired the Torso of the Vatican ; but, unlike Raphael, he expressed no enthusiasm for classic art, either by word of mouth or pen, and certainly showed but little trace of its influence in his works. The causes of his development are difficult to discover, whereas those of Raphael’s growth may be followed up to their point of departure as clearly as the folds in the drapery of a fine statue. His works successively reflect the faces of Giovanni Santi and Perugino, of Lionardo, Fra Bartolomeo, and Michelangelo, as a running river reflects the objects upon its banks.
Umbria, Florence, and Rome each play their part in the shaping of his art, and yet his individuality is unaffected, like that of the river whose tributary streams increase its volume as it flows on to the sea, but do not otherwise change it. Precisely because he was so quick to feel and respond to external influences, Rome, during the reigns of Julius and of Leo, was the most desirable residence for Raphael. She took possession of him, and from the day when the Pope received him in the Camera della Segnatura to that of his death he was civis Romanus ” in thought, word, and deed.
The restoration of Rome to her ancient glory was the ruling idea which he shared in common with other distinguished men at the papal court, over which the Sovereign Pontiff presided, dispensing life and heat to all around him, like the sun in the centre of the heavenly system. To restore the walls, the palaces and temples of the ancient city, to rebuild the ruined basilicas, to raise new churches of stately dimensions beside them, and to undertake art enterprises upon a hitherto unequalled scale of magnitude, had been the wish of Charlemagne the Frank, Theodoric the Goth, and Theodolinda the Lombard queen; when the long night of the Dark Ages had passed away it prompted the Countess Matilda to give her lands and money to Pope Gregory VII., and in the fourteenth century it stirred the heart of Petrarch. The letters of the poet, who, though not a Roman by birth, was the most Roman of the Romans, are filled with passionate appeals to the recreant pontiff who lay sleeping at Avignon under silken hangings, while the Lateran, mother of all churches, was roofless and abandoned, and the streets of Rome were grass-grown and desolate. When at last Urban returned from his voluntary exile, the poet rested in the hope that a new era of prosperity was about to dawn upon the city of his affections. The power of the Renaissance to redeem her waste places, which showed itself in all that was accomplished by Eugenius IV., Nicholas V., Pius II., Sixtus IV., and Innocent V., was not, however, fully felt until the days of Julius II. and Leo X., when all those great schemes for the embellishment of Rome were entered upon, which added the noblest works of modern art to her ancient treasures, and by forging a link between the past and the present made her mistress of both. The past was even more real to the minds of men than the present, in the Rome which Raphael and Michelangelo knew. Men wrote, thought, and talked in a pagan spirit, mingling the old wine with the new, heathen philosophy with Christian theology. The orgies of the Empire had been renewed under Alexander VI., the suppers of Trimalchion surpassed, the crimes of Nero and Caligula equalled, and now some of the nobler phases of her ancient life were to be revived under Julius and Leo.
The growing influence of the antique upon Raphael after his arrival in Rome is clearly traceable in his great works. Although he had perhaps seen and studied statues and gems at Urbino, and certainly at Florence, he began to work at the Vatican in a mediaeval spirit, showing himself still the disciple of a school whose chief aim was to glorify the Church, to illustrate her dogmas, and incorporate her types. In the “Disputa” he illustrated her power, displayed the splendors of the celestial hierarchy, and portrayed the wise, the learned, the gifted, – popes and scholars, poets and artists, – acknowledging the light from heaven transmitted through her to be the only guide to truth. In the Parnassus he stepped from the mediaeval world into that of the Renaissance, and represented the green summits of Helicon shaded with laurel groves, beneath which the great poets of every age meet in friendly converse at the court of Apollo. Possessed by a new spirit, he uttered words not to be found in the dictionary of Holy Mother Church, and talked in a language whose idioms are not in her grammar. The ideas which he expressed were in the air, and he gave them utterance in form and color. It was to Rome that he owed this change of aim and transformation of style, this widening of the boundaries of his art, this casting off the shackles of system, by which he gained a strength which enabled him to wear the chains of art so lightly, that though controlled by them he yet walked in perfect freedom. The originality of his mind saved him from falling into that slavish imitation of antique forms which the incessant study of ancient art might otherwise have induced, so that when he repeated an antique group, such as the Three Graces at Siena (Fig. 7), or a statue, such as the Ariadne of the Vatican, or treated a classical subject, such as the Lucretia or the Galatea, or used an Apollo or a Minerva to decorate the niches of the great Hall of Assembly in the School of Athens, he did so with modifications and changes which made them his own.
Leo X. appointed Raphael chief inspector of all marbles dug up at Rome, and commissioned him to make plans and elevations of ancient Roman buildings, but how far he had accomplished this gigantic task at the time of his death is not known, though he had certainly made many drawings, as the letters of his contemporaries testify.
Among them is one written by Marc Antonio Michiel de Ser Vettor, a noble Venetian, to a friend at Venice, in which, after giving an account of Raphael’s last moments, he says: “He had drawn the ancient edifices of Rome in a book, with their proportions, forms, and ornaments, so faithfully, that any who had seen his drawings could in some sort say that he had seen ancient Rome.” In a letter written by Calcagnini he says : “By digging down accumulations of earth, and making restorations according to the descriptions of ancient authors, Raphael has so greatly excited the, admiration of Leo X. and of the Roman people that they regard him as a god sent from heaven to give back her ancient glory to the Eternal City.”
The following passage from Raphael’s report of his work to the Pope gives an idea of the spirit in which he prosecuted this great enterprise, and of the depth of his feeling about Rome. “Some people,” he says, “believe that the stories told about the wonders of Rome are fables, but my study of her ancient remains has brought me to the conclusion that many things which are impossible to us were mere child’s play to the ancient Romans. By long and careful inspection of ancient monuments, by reading ancient authors and comparing their descriptions with the existing ruins, I think that I have acquired some knowledge of ancient architecture. To know anything so excellent is a source of great pleasure to me, but at the same time I am filled with the deepest grief when I behold the dead body of this noble city, once queen of the world, but now so miserably lacerated.” Raphael then points to the Goths and Vandals as the authors of her present state of ruin, blames those popes who permitted the destruction of so many fine buildings, statues, and triumphal arches, as well as the people who have undermined edifices to extract “pozzolana, and have made lime out of marble cornices and statues, and asserts his belief that all the buildings of’ modern Rome are built of mortar made out of pulverized marbles. ” Since I have been in Rome, now less than twelve years,” he adds, “I have witnessed the destruction of many fine monuments, such as the Meta Sudans in the Via Alexandrina, the arch which stood at the entrance to the Baths of Diocletian, as well as of many splendid columns, architraves, and friezes, – acts which Hannibal himself would have been ashamed of.”
Postponing what we have to say about Raphael’s education as an architect, which was begun under Bramante and perfected by his own subsequent studies of ancient buildings, we turn to consider those frescos at the Vatican which he was commissioned to paint at his first interview with Julius II., to whom he was presented by his compatriot Bramante, and from whom, as Vasari tells us, he received many caresses.
The Camera della Segnatura, in which he shortly after began to paint the Dispute of the Sacrament, has been well called the Chamber of the Faculties,10 because the subjects depicted represent the sum of knowledge through which man arrives at Divine truth. Theology, poetry, philosophy, and jurisprudence are there illustrated by the Dispute of the Sacrament, the Parnassus, the School of Athens, and the Jurisprudence (called also the Three Virtues), and by four symbolic figures in medallions, and four compositions representing the Temptation, the Apollo and Marsyas, the Astronomy, and the Judgment of Solomon. Of the four kinds of knowledge, that of the Divine is illustrated by the ” Disputa,” the Theology, the Temptation, and by the Apollo and Marsyas, which is indirectly connected with it, for when Dante prays Apollo to
“Enter into my bosom then, and breathe As at the time when Marsyas thou didst draw Out of the scabbard of those limbs of his,”
he expresses the hope that, thus freed from fleshly bonds and filled with the Divine spirit, he will be better able to describe the celestial scenes which are about to open before him during his journey.
Human knowledge is illustrated by the School of Athens, and by the single figures of Philosophy and Astronomy, which latter stands for the sciences.
Judicial knowledge, or the knowledge of truth and right, is figured in the Jurisprudence, the Justice, and the Judgment of Solomon, which is the type of human justice inspired by God, whilst knowledge of the beautiful is set forth by the Parnassus, the Poesy, and the Apollo and Marsyas, which illustrates the victory of true over false art.
to Rome under its influence only to find that they have mistaken their vocation. In a more legitimate strain of argument he points out that Bramante was not Raphael’s uncle, that Bembo was neither Cardinal nor at Rome in 1508, and that Raphael, when he finished the frescos of the first chamber, was twenty-nine years old.
That the ” Disputa ” (see Fig. 10) was the first fresco painted by Raphael at the Vatican is clearly indicated by its obviously symmetrical arrangement, its puristic treatment, and its Umbrian spirit. It represents a discussion about church symbols and doctrines between many men of many minds, upon which a miraculous vision sheds its light ; and symbolizes, through the mystery of the Eucharist, the relation established between God and man by the redemption. It is an image of the agreement between the saints of the Old and New Testament in heaven, and the theologians, poets, and artists upon earth. It is not a discussion so much as the closing by a vision of a discussion upon points of faith. Opinions and arguments having been advanced and sustained, and human intelligence having proved itself inadequate to the task of solving heavenly mysteries, the clouds separate and the celestial hierarchy appears in all its glory. Rays of light like golden harp-strings illumine the sky, and between them countless cherubim are seen surrounding the Trinity.
“In fashion there as of a snow-white rose Displayed itself to me the saintly host, Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride.”
“0 Trinal light, that in a single star Sparkling upon their sight so satisfies them, Look down upon our tempest here below.”
Christ sits below God the Father, between the Madonna and St. John the Baptist, under an overarching rainbow, with saints, patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs ranged on either hand. On his right are St. Peter with the Bible as guardian of the faith, and the keys as holder of the power to bind and to loose ; Adam, father of the human race ; St. John, revealer of Divine truth in the Apocalypse ; David with crown and harp, of whose house Christ in his human nature was a member; and St. Stephen, the first martyr, with a companion saint. On his left are St. Paul with the sword, emblem of his martyrdom, as also of the penetrating nature of his doctrines ; Abraham with the knife of sacrifice, first symbol of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God ; St. James, third witness of the Transfiguration and type of hope, as St. Peter is of faith, and St. John of love ; Moses with the tables of the law, St. Lorenzo, and St. George.
This saintly host, sitting in light above the earth upon a great bank of clouds, is, as it were, reflected by another host, in the lower part of the fresco, as objects are reflected in a lake.
When affluent most in verdure and in flowers, So ranged aloft all round about the light, Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand All who above there have from us returned. And if the lowest row collect within it So great a light, how vast the amplitude Is of this rose in its extremest leaves.”
The crowding disputants, some sunk in thought, some absorbed in reading, and others casting away their books as if suddenly illumined with truth from on high, are grouped around an altar upon which the Eucharist is exposed in a pyx. On either side sit the four great fathers of the Latin church. To the left is St. Jerome, type of contemplative life, absorbed in meditation of the sacred unity, with the Vulgate and his letters lying near him ; to the right St. Ambrose, representing the church militant, with his eyes and hands raised as if ravished by celestial harmonies. Near him are his great convert, St. Augustine, in the act of dictating his Confessions to a scribe, Pope Anacletus, martyr, and San Bonaventura, ” Doctor Seraphicus,” reading in a book. Opposite St. Augustine is St. Gregory the Great, in pontifical robes, with his Commentaries on the Book of Job (Liber Moralium) lying near him. St. Bernard, with his hands stretched out towards the altar, is next to St. Jerome ; then comes Petrus Lombardus, ” Doctor sententiarum,” founder of scholastic theology, who first wrote a discussion on the Sacraments ; Duns Scotus, “Doctor subtilis,” and Thomas Aquinas, “Doctor Angelicus.”
The Pope seen in profile, who is pointed out by a philosopher to the notice of a young man leaning upon a balustrade in the foreground, is generally said to be Innocent III., author of the Veni Creator and the Stabat Mater, but the face is the face of Sixtus IV., the uncle of Julius, to whom he owed his success as an ecclesiastic. Behind him are Dante and Savonarola. The two bishops to the left of the altar represent the clergy, and the noble figure turning towards it, with his discarded books lying at his feet, is a scholar, convinced that wisdom is to be found in the teachings of the Church only. The three young men who do homage to the Eucharist stand for the people, the priests and laies for the schismatics, and heresy is typified by a sectary interpreting a pas-sage from the Scriptures to a crowd of auditors. It has been plausibly suggested that the church on the hill in the landscape to the left of the altar, is the old basilica of St. Peter, whose destruction was begun about a year before Raphael’s arrival at Rome ; and that the architectural base to the right typifies the new church, of which Julius, whose name is inscribed upon the pala of the altar, was the founder.
While the composition of this noble work is not exempt from the formalism of Perugino’s school, there is no trace of it in the forms, attitudes, or draperies of the single figures. These were not surpassed in easy grace of movement or in expressive gesture by Raphael in his later works, nor did he ever paint a finer group than that of the heresiarch and the disputants, or a more vigorous and characteristic head than that of Dante.
The Temptation and the figure of Theology on the ceiling of the room, which are connected with the “Disputa,” strike us not only by their beauty, but also by their fitness as a part of the general scheme. Biblical stories like the first could not have been introduced into a composition intended to illustrate man’s need of enlightenment about matters too deep for him to fathom without aid from on high ; nor could allegorical subjects like the second have been combined in it with the representation of historical persons who had labored for the faith and done their part to defend and sustain it, and as neither could be ignored, it was necessary to use each separately, outside of and yet dependent upon the great fresco. This Raphael accomplished by treating them as a part of the decorations of the ceiling. The Temptation, which illustrates the necessity of redemption through Christ, is one of these detached parts of a great whole. In Michelangelo’s composition of the same subject in the Sistine Chapel, the woman-headed serpent, having wound herself with the vigorous coils of an anaconda about the trunk of a tree, forces the forbidden fruit into the hand of a dark-haired, ox-eyed, passionate-looking Eve, who seems fitter for the life which is to follow the expulsion than for that which preceded it. Adam, eager to receive the fatal gift, cannot even wait until Eve offers it to him, but thrusts out his brawny arm to pluck it for himself. The passion which here agitates each of the actors in the drama is unknown to the gentle creatures depicted by Raphael. His tempter is apparently but a timid worker of evil. His Eve, with her golden hair and ingenuous face, offers the apple with a gentle courtesy, while Adam turns to the serpent with an inquiring look, as if he asked, “Is it lawful for me to eat ? ” It seems impossible that two such beings could have been tempted to disobey, for they are apparently destitute of that leaven of original sin which in ordinary human beings offers a point of attack to Satan.
Worthy indeed is the single figure of Theology to resume this triune work within itself.
“Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct, Appeared a lady under a green mantle, Vested in color of the living flame.”
Seated upon a throne of clouds, and attended by two lovely genii, this image of calm and dignified beauty holds a book in one hand and points with the other to the scene where those momentous questions which concern her are under discussion.
The Pope’s interest in Raphael’s work led him not only to watch its progress, but to offer suggestions which, even when not of the happiest kind, could not well be disregarded; but more valuable counsels were given him by such learned men as Bibbiena, Castiglione, Bembo, and Sadoleto. He was not, like Michelangelo, a poet and a reader of great poems, accustomed from his early youth to ponder over the masterpieces of Italian literature, and was, therefore, somewhat dependent upon others for help when dealing with subjects whose adequate treatment demanded no little book learning. Before he painted the School of Athens his literary friends read such books as Diogenes Laertius to him, and when he was making ready for the Parnassus, they fed his spirit upon the Paradiso of Dante and the Triumphs of Petrarch. From Petrarch’s Triumph of Love, in which Alcaeus, Pindar, Anacreon, Virgil, Ovid, Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus wander in a flowery and verdant meadow discoursing of love, he may have derived some valuable hints for the general treatment of his Parnassus ; but in the Di-viva Commedia he found far richer sources of inspiration. The Homer of the fourth canto of the Inferno is like the painter’s Homer, and the people ” with solemn eyes and slow,” whom Dante and Virgil saw when they “came into the meadow of fresh verdure,” are like his Apollo, the Muses, and the great poets of every period, who sit under the shade of the laurel-trees upon the summit of the double-headed mount, with the Castalian fount at their feet, and the yawning Corycian cave figured in the great window below them. Of the sisters nine this is Calliope, clad in a white tunic, who stands looking towards Homer, Virgil, and Dante ; and this Polyhymnia, seated upon the grass with a lyre in her hand, and these farther in the background are Terpsichore, Euterpe, and Erato grouped together, in company with Melpomene, Urania, Thalia, and Clio.
This lovely woman reclining in the foreground is Sappho, with book and lyre, and the poets near her are Alcaeus leaning against a laurel-tree, Petrarch, Corinna or Laura, and Ariosto, or the Tuscan poet, Francesco Berni. Those sons of song on the other side of the sacred hill are Pindar, who has Horace for his listener, Sanazzaro the Neapolitan poet, Anacreon (Ennius or Ovid), Aristophanes and Ariosto holding converse together, and not far from them are Terence and Plautus, Boccaccio and Tebaldeo, the latter a Ferrarese poet of Raphael’s time.
Though less imposing than the ” Disputa,” and from the very nature of its subject less interesting than the School of Athens, the Parnassus (Fig. 11) has a serene beauty of its own. It is to the other frescos of Raphael what the Pastoral Symphony is to the other symphonies of Beethoven. Few figures are more stately than its Homer, more in-spired than its Pindar, more lovely than its Urania, more graceful than its Sappho. They are the first-fruits of the classical influences so lately brought to bear upon the painter at Rome, and have a peculiar interest in our eyes, as with them Raphael ceased to be exclusively a painter of religious subjects, and thenceforward treated Christian or pagan themes indifferently. In the single figure of Poetry upon the ceiling he caught the spirit of the lyric poets of antiquity. Seated in a noble attitude, and wearing a laurel crown upon her head, she spreads her wings as if about to soar aloft. Her robe border is spangled with stars, and her deep blue mantle falls upon her crossed feet. With her dreamy eyes she seems to be watching the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, in which the god, representing true art, receives the laurel crown of victory, while the poor faun, suspended to a tree, hangs ready to be pulled ” out of the scabbard of those limbs of his.”
Raphael probably painted all the medallions and pendentives of the ceiling in this chamber after he had finished the four large frescos, for otherwise we should see a similar difference in style between them. This is not the case, for not only the biblical compositions, with perhaps the single exception of the Adam and Eve, but also the allegorical figures, – the Poesy, the Philosophy, the Theology, and the Jurisprudence, – are alike in style.
Theology and Poetry having been thus nobly illustrated, Philosophy next received a still nobler treatment at Raphael’s hands. Looked at without reference to the subject, its apparent freedom from formal arrangement gives the School of Athens the appearance of a real scene in which accident has played a happy part ; but on closer examination we see that the groups are wonderfully varied and logically combined, that the action of every individual is true to character and singularly appropriate, and that while the coloring is harmonious and vigorous, it is not obtrusive. Like that of autumn woods, which have
“On sunless days A sunshine of their own,”
it has a subdued brilliancy of tone which gives grandeur to the whole. The church of Sta Maria degli Angeli, on some day when crowds of people are moving about the nave, presents a sight like that represented in the School of Athens. Similar sights were often offered to Raphael’s observation at Rome, where church ceremonies constantly brought large crowds together under the roof of some great building, whose arches had as wide and majestic a span as those under which he assembled his Greek philosophers and their followers. The ruins of ancient Rome, such as the Basilica of Constantine or the Baths of Caracalla, filled his mind with images of architectural grandeur suited to his purpose, and while he had these silent models around him, which he could transform into a fitting stage, the Romans themselves furnished him with living models for the actors. The characteristic attitude of his Diogenes was doubtless suggested to him by that of some Beppo of the sixteenth century who lay basking in the sunshine, and the cripple asking alms at the beautiful gate of the Temple is evidently a carefully studied portrait of one of that class of mendicants whose modern representatives whine out their plea for charity before St. Peter’s or on the Spanish steps. To select and to combine, to pick out single types and to unite them in one great whole, to measure all by that “certa idea” which he had in his mind, as a gauge of the fitness of each for the setting to which it was destined, was Raphael’s occupation while conceiving and working out his frescos at the Vatican.
So complicated a subject as that of the School of Athens (Fig. 12) demanded the aid of scholars and of books, and the perfect adaptation of gestures and bearing to character shows that he used both to advantage. No one ignorant of the general history of Greek philosophy could have planned a work which exhibits its development, its double tendency, and its decline.
Its general scheme may be explained in a few words. Plato and Aristotle, its leaders, occupy the centre of the composition with their disciples. Socrates, who stands to the right of Plato, forms a bond between his school and that of Pythagoras. The Stoics, the Cynics, and the Epicureans move about the steps to the left and in front of Aristotle, and the masters of exact sciences, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and Zoroaster, occupy the foreground. The different tendencies of Plato and Aristotle are indicated by their gestures. While the first points upwards, the second spreads out his hand significantly above the earth. “Plato’s relation to the earth,” says Goethe, “is that of a superior spirit, whose good pleasure it is to dwell in it for a time. He penetrates into its depths more that he may replenish them from the fulness of his own nature than that he may fathom their mysteries.
He scales its heights as one yearning after renewed participation in the source of his being. Aristotle stands to the world in the relation of a great architect. Here he is, and here he must work and create. He collects materials from all sides, arranges them, piles them up in layers, and so rises in regular form like a pyramid toward the sky, while Plato seeks the heaven like an obelisk, or, better, like a pointed flame.”
As the attitudes of the two great leaders are suited to the nature of the doctrines which they profess, so also are those of their disciples, Speusippus, Menexenus, and Xenocrates, who follow Plato and listen reverently with bowed heads, as befits men whose philosophy is idealistic ; while Theophrastus, Eudamus, and Dicaearchus, who are guided by Aristotle, have a more inquiring air, being rather men of action than of reflection, who tend to positivism rather than to idealism. Outside of these quiet groups of listeners are Stoics, Cynics, Sophists, and Sceptics, imperfect disciples of both, restless and inquiring investigators, ill satisfied with their conclusions, having grasped less of truth and wandered farther into error than the genuine Platonists or Aristotelians. One of the most characteristic figures is that of Socrates, the expressive action of whose hands indicates the close reasoner, the subtle exposer of sophistry. He is talking to the splendid Alkibiades, who loved him and whose life he saved, and is listened to by an artisan, one of a class with whom he delighted to converse. Just behind him, leaning on his elbow, is Xenophon of Athens, one of the older disciples of Socrates, who, in his Cyropcedia, illustrated the Socratic principle that ” authority is the prerogative of the intelligent, they alone being qualified to wield it.” AEschines, who like Xenophon reverently followed Socrates with the hope of attaining the beautiful and the good (icaXoicdyaû a) through intercourse with him, stands behind Alkibiades, stretching out his hand towards the Sophists, Gorgias, Kritias, and Diogenes of Melos, who is running forward as if eager to engage in a discussion. Euclid of Megara, not the mathematician, but the philosopher, who founded a school after the death of his master, in which the ethical and dialectical principles of Socrates were blended with the doctrines of the Eleatics, completes the Socratic group. His attitude is characteristic of his indolent and procrastinating disposition.
Directly below this group is that formed by Pythagoras, his son Telanges, his wife Theano, and his pupil Archytas. The harmonic tablet which Telanges holds at once tells us that he belongs to that school of philosophy which was based upon the science of numbers, a school whose founder, Pythagoras, first used the name of philosophy, taught that everything owes its existence and consistency to harmony, which he considered to be the basis of all beauty, and found music in the revolving spheres. The turbaned head seen over the shoulder of Pythagoras is said to be that of Averroes, the initiator of the Arabians into Greek philosophy, whose garbled translation of Aristotle was the only one known in the West until the time of Chrysoloras. Anaxagoras, the master of Pericles, stands between Pythagoras and Heraclitus, for, as he placed the spirit above matter in his system, he forms the bond between them. The latter sits apart, absorbed in thought, clothed in sombre gray, indicative of the obscurity of his principles, which obtained for him the surname of the Obscure. The standing figure of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, nephew, of Julius II., who was at Rome when Raphael was painting the School of Athens, forms the apex of the group, and the child behind Averroes is Federigo Gonzaga, future Duke of Mantua. The stout philosopher, to whom an old man has brought a child that he may judge of his disposition, is Plato’s contemporary, Democritus of Abdera, the laugher at the follies of men, who has been called a Pythagorean, though he was really a disciple of Leucippus, the founder of the atomistic theory. The head of Nausiphanes, his scholar, appears above his shoulder.
While the left side of the fresco is thus occupied by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Sophists, the right is filled by the Aristotelians, Cynics, Stoics, Eclectics, Epicureans, Mathematicians, and Sceptics. Be-hind the first are the Peripatetics, who found bodily action conducive to thought, and Aristippus, the scholar of Gorgias the Sophist. The figures of Epicurus, a noble and graceful person, ascending the steps with his back turned to Diogenes, who has rolled out of his tub to lie where no man can come between him and the sunshine ; of a youth hastily leaving the Hall of Assembly (who typifies the end of the old Greek school) ; of a young Eclectic writing on his knee, overlooked by Pyrrhus of Elis (who represents the transition from eclecticism to scepticism) ; and of Archesilaus, the founder of the new Academy, towards whom one of the later Cynics advances with a staff in his hand, – are varied in action, and eminently characteristic.
The group representing speculative mathematics, in the foreground to the left, of which Pythagoras is the centre, is balanced on the right by that representing practical mathematics, figured by Archimedes (said to be a portrait of Bramante) and his pupils. The great Syracusan master stands, as in Petrarch’s Vision of Fame, col viso basso, bending over the slate upon which he is working out a problem for the instruction of four lovely youths, three of whom follow his demonstration intently, while the one in the middle with raised hand seems to be listening to Ptolemy the geographer, and to Zoroaster (who represents the Oriental origin of Greek philosophy), as they converse together with globes in their hands. Near them Perugino and Raphael are introduced as spectators.
The Triumphs of Petrarch, which were suggestive to Raphael when painting the Parnassus, seem to have served him also for the School of Athens, judging by a passage in the Triumph of Fame which reads like a description of the central group:
“Then turning to the left I Plato saw, Who in the troop of great men nearest came Unto that goal which those alone by Heaven endowed Can hope to reach. And with him Aristotle, Familiar with all turns of deepest thought. Pythagoras, too, who haply first Did call philosophy by worthy name. With these were Socrates and Xenophon and Zeno, Who did show an open palm and a clenched fist.”
It is difficult to set a limit to the study of classic authors which may have helped in the creation of this vast subject, a study not indeed undertaken with that special end in view. The learned men with whom Raphael lived were proud to offer him the fruit of their researches in fields which he had ‘neither the time nor the education to explore.
Not long after Raphael’s death doubts were raised as to the real subject of this fresco. Vasari says it represents the union of Theology and Philosophy through Astronomy, and points out St. Matthew in the so-called Pythagoras. Giorgio Mantovano (1550) engraved it with the title of St. Paul disputing with the Stoics and the Epicureans, and another engraver gave halos to Plato and Aristotle in order to identify them as St. Peter and St. Paul, while certain writers have maintained that the two Apostles are here represented as preaching at Athens. Grimm, in his late Life of Raphael, discusses this extraordinary theory at length,26 though to little purpose, but Raphael’s adherence to once adopted types as, for instance, to those of St. Paul and St. Peter, which he borrowed from the frescos of Filippo Lippi at the Carmine sufficiently refute it. Their features were individualized to him as much as those of Julius and Leo, and we recognize them as portraits, while his Plato and Aristotle are purely imaginary types, for which he could not recur to antique busts, though he did so in other cases when it was possible, as the well-known features of Socrates attest. Again, Raphael, who is always true to history in his surroundings, never would have represented Paul as preaching in a Roman temple. He would have put him on the hill of Mars, the Areopagus, as he did in his cartoon. The grand figure of Philosophy, in the medallion which belongs to this fresco, also indicates its subject. Seated on the clouds in a throne-chair, the jambs of which are decorated with the effigy of Diana of Ephesus, who personifies the three kingdoms of nature, she wears a robe with four zones of color which typify the four elements. The blue zone with its stars is the air ; the red, fire ; the green, with its fishes, water; the brown, with plants, the earth. Her two books treat of nature and of ethics, and upon the tablets borne by her attendant genii are inscribed the words ” cognitio causarum.”
Religion, Poetry, and Philosophy having been illustrated, one wall of the chamber still remained a blank, intended to be filled with a composition representing Jurisprudence. To treat this subject historically, without in some measure repeating the School of Athens, would have been difficult if not impossible. This reason probably induced Raphael to symbolize it by its attributes, Prudence, Force, and Temperance, whence the fresco is called the Three Virtues, and by two separate historical compositions, one of Justinian giving the pandects to Tiburnianus, and the other of Gregory IX. delivering the decretals to an advocate. The Pope in this latter fresco is Julius II., and the three cardinals are his uncle Antonio del Monte, Giovanni de’ Medici, who afterwards became Pope Leo X., and Alexander Farnese, the future Pope Paul III. As the Swiss guards in attendance are also evidently painted from life, the composition really represents a scene at the court of Julius II.
The three Virtues in the lunette over the window are noble and graceful figures identified by attributes and significant gestures. Prudence has two faces, as in mediaeval symbolism, the one, aged, looks back into the Past ; the other, young and beautiful, into the mirror of self-knowledge, which a lovely little genius holds before her. Force wears a helmet and corselet, and has an olive-branch in her hand to indicate that she is a wise Bellona, whose office it is to enforce peace ; and Temperance has a bridle, emblematic of moderation and self-control. Justice, their sister, sits apart from them in one of the medallions of the ceiling, with Poetry, Theology, and Science, represented by Astronomy, a celestial maiden whose graceful form is partially veiled by the transparent globe over which she leans to spell out the constellations, to number the stars, and to call them by their names.
In the fourth and last pendentive of the ceiling Raphael painted the Judgment of Solomon (Plate V.), which, as a philosophical judgment based not upon the written law but upon a profound knowledge of human nature, links the School of Athens and the Philosophy with the Jurisprudence. The athletic figure of the executioner with the dead babe lying between his feet and the living child struggling in his grasp ; the real mother who at any cost to herself would save him ; the infallible judge who, with a significant gesture, pronounces the righteous sentence ; the false mother who appeals to him with a coldness which strikingly contrasts with the energetic action of her whom she seeks to defraud, – are here set before us in a beautiful composition of the utmost beauty with the utmost conciseness of pictorial language.
Between the arrival of Raphael at Rome in 1508, and the death of Julius II. in 1513, he had completed all the frescos in the first chamber; the Heliodorus and a part of the Miracle of Bolsena in the second; and had painted the Isaiah (1512), the ” Madonna del Foligno ” (1511), one of the Orleans Madonnas, and the “Madonna di Casa Tempi,” besides making an infinite number of more or less carefully elaborated designs and drawings. Such fertility of invention and rapidity of execution, coupled with transcendent artistic excellence, can hardly be paralleled in the recorded work of any other artist during a similar space of time. It would seem as if, in view of the short span of life allotted to him, Heaven had quadrupled his comparative ratio of possible productiveness, for it was not only during these four years, but during the whole of his Roman life, that he poured forth an unceasing stream of works at the same rapid rate. For many of his great frescos he gave the design only, committing the execution, in great measure, to his able scholars and assistants, but the easel pictures were for the most part painted by his own hand.
Among these one of the finest, executed during the period under consideration (1508 -1512), is the admirable portrait of Julius II., formerly in the church of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome and now in the Pitti gallery, which not only portrays the Pope’s outward form, but reveals the indomitable spirit which dwelt within it.
Another portrait of a very different character, that of the Fornarina in the Barberini Palace at Rome, was probably painted about the year 1509. Though admirably drawn, and modelled with peculiar skill, it is liard and dry in tone ; the face has but little expression, and is wanting in depth of sentiment, which seems not a little strange if it be the portrait of the baker’s daughter whom Raphael loved and to whom he addressed the three love-sonnets which are his sole title to the name of poet. When coupled with the facts that no allusion is made to her in any of Raphael’s letters or papers ; that the name of Margarita, as her real name, is only known to us by an anonymous manuscript note on the margin of a page of Vasari’s Lives (ed. of 1568) ; and that the surname of the ” Fornarina ” was first heard of in the last century, its character would tempt us to class the so-called mistress of Raphael among the mythic personages of history. The splendid portrait in the Tribune of the Uffizi, also called the Fornarina, and generally attributed to Raphael, would fill our ideal of the baker’s daughter far more satisfactorily than that at the Barberini Palace, were she less of a great lady and more like the daughters of the Trastevere, ox-eyed as Juno, low-browed and straight-featured as a classic bust.
When we sweep the heavens with a telescope, the especial brilliancy of certain stars arrests the eye, and we pause to observe them, though not unmindful of their countless sisters which sparkle in the wide expanse ; so when we enter the picture-gallery of Raphael, the superior beauty of certain works absorbs us, and we pass over others which, if less numerous, would receive equal attention. Even in those selected for study the attempt to analyze detail to any great extent is futile, for its variety is endless. The arrangement of the hair, for instance, in the thousands of female heads drawn and painted by Raphael, though identical in no two, is beautiful in all. Equally varied are draperies and backgrounds, groups of figures and myriads of minor accessories. An exhaustive account of the works of Raphael being impossible, we shall select a few for consideration in each category of subjects.
Among those painted during the reign of Julius II. one of the most famous is the “Madonna del Foligno,” which was ordered by the Pope’s private secretary, Sigismund Conti, in fulfilment of a vow made to the Madonna, in gratitude for his escape from injury during the siege of Foligno by the papal forces, as also when a thunderbolt fell upon his house. If in looking at this picture we feel that it wants somewhat of that naïve purity and freshness which distinguishes the works of Raphael’s Florentine period, we feel that it shows greater mastery over technical details. The forms are rounder, the lines more boldly drawn, the composition more freely treated. The scheme of color is brilliant by force of contrasted reds and greens, like that of Perugino, rather than rich through subtle gradations from deep tones to bright lights, like that of the great Venetian masters. In Venetian pictures, as in the flower or the gem, diffused color radiates from some central focus, and passes insensibly from depths to heights, while in those even of the later Umbrians the colors are juxtaposed rather than blended. In them, as in the ” Madonna del Foligno ” the line triumphs over the tone, and the figures, though united by their concurrence in a simultaneous action, are separate to the eye. Titian would have fused them together by rich harmonies of tone, and thus would have appealed to the sensuous rather than to the intellectual parts of our nature. Sitting before a Venetian picture, we can deliberately set aside its subject, and enjoy its color as we enjoy the perfume of a flower or the flavor of a cordial ; but this cannot be done with the works of painters like Raphael, in which form and thought predominate. Drop the subject and its treatment through lines, and little remains to charm us, for these are all important, and the appeal is first to the mind. While then the Assumption of the Virgin by Titian especially enchants the eye, the “Madonna del Foligno ” of Raphael addresses itself to the cultivated perception of beauty of form through the gracefully disposed group of the Madonna and Child ; to the artistic appreciation of beauty of outline by the bounding lines of the whole composition and by those of its component parts ; and, lastly, to the intellectual apprehension of truth to character by such a life-like head as that of the donor kneeling in the foreground, who contemplates the beatific vision.
Raphael’s progress in the use of color, which is so noticeable in this and in other pictures of the same period, shows how alive he was to his own shortcomings, and how, when contact with other artists who excelled him in any respect made these visible to him, he straightway labored to bring himself up to a higher level. Thus under the influence of Michelangelo, he aimed at grandeur of style, as in the Sibyls of the ” Pace,” which we look for vainly in his earlier works. Being of all men best capable of appreciating the great qualities of his rival, he could not see the frescos of the Sistine Chapel without having a new light break in upon him which never would have shone through the narrow windows of Perugino’s studio. Recognizing what separated him from complete excellence, and ever aiming to attain it, he gradually rounded out his being until it attained the figure of a perfect sphere. The marvel was, that being so receptive he could yet remain original. Great men acted upon him as the sunlight and the rain, the moonlight and the dew, act upon goodly ground, causing it to bring forth abundantly. When, therefore, as in his Isaiah at San Agostino, he worked in the spirit of Michelangelo, we may suppose that he did so intentionally. Raphael possessed this Protean power in an eminent degree, while Michelangelo, shut up within himself as in a strongly walled fortress, was wholly wanting in it. His artistic sympathies were dead to works however excellent which were produced by modes of thought different from his own, and even his appreciation of beauty in man was limited to one period of life. Enamored of the adult human form, he lost the perception of those differences which distinguish man at different periods of life, and gave the same muscular forms to the bodies of young and old. Raphael, on the contrary, had a true standard in his mind for each type of beauty. His children are the very essence of childhood, with all its graces and charms, even when as in Him of the San Sisto the tender face is freighted with Divinity. His young men are ideals of manly strength and beauty, his virgins of purity and delicacy, his matrons, like Juno, of nobility and dignity, his old men, like the sages of antiquity, of venerable wisdom. His lyre was fitted with many strings, and he played it like one who was master of all its infinite resources, while that of Michelangelo gave forth but one sub-lime unvarying strain.
Before Raphael had terminated the frescos in the Camera della Segnatura, he had planned those which were to be painted in the adjoining room, generally known as the Chamber of Heliodorus from the only one of the four terminated before the death of Julius II. Considering himself as the divinely appointed defender of the Church against her enemies whether spiritual or temporal, this Pope desired to be so represented and remembered. Raphael had already illustrated the overthrow of the first by Divine interposition in the “Disputa,” and now he was to symbolize the vindication of the truth of Church doctrines in the Miracle of Bolsena, to show how God chastised the spoiler of her temporal possessions in the Heliodorus, and how he arrested the march of a barbarian who came to plunder the city of his vicegerent in the Attila.
To one ignorant of its intended allusions, the Heliodorus (Fig. 13) simply represents the attempt made by the captain of Seleucus IV. to seize the treasure amassed in the Temple at Jerusalem for the succor of widows and orphans, when, in answer to the prayer of Onias, the Jewish high-priest, a celestial warrior attended by two angelic messengers over-threw the robber and trampled bim under his horse’s feet. But when we remember that Julius II. claimed to have cleared the patrimony of the Church of French and German invaders and regarded himself as the savior of Italy, that he chastised the Bentivogli of Bologna and the Baglioni of Perugia for revolting against his authority, we see the Pope typified as priest in Onias, as warrior in the avenging angels, and as the deliverer of his people in the group of terrified Jewish women and children clustered together in the foreground. He also appears in person, borne upon his sella gestatoria, whence he calmly overlooks the scene. This glaring anachronism is defensible on artistic grounds, as by the opposition of repose to tumult the effect of agitation is increased within the Temple, an effect which is further carried out by the contrast between the rapt stillness of the high-priest praying at the altar, and the swoop of the angelic messengers which is like that of vultures upon their prey. The focus of interest is the group formed by the archangel with a gryphon-crested helmet, who tramples the plunderer under the feet of his ponderous charger, and two wingless messengers of vengeance, whose wonderful lightness, bird-like swiftness of motion, and grandly impassioned action reveal beings of a nature superior to man, who, moving by a Divine impulse, are as certain to reach their aim as arrows shot from the bow of an unerring marksman. Exaggerated neither in action, limb, nor muscle, they are yet filled with irresistible power, and belong to that highest class of artistic creations, in which effect is produced by hidden causes. The brawny muscles and massive limbs of a giant prepare us for feats of strength ; but those of the stripling who overthrows him awe us, for we recognize them as produced by an invisible power against which material force is as naught. The mute terror of those who witness the punishment of Heliodorus proceeds from this cause. They feel that all mortal effort is superfluous, whereas the crowd in the “Incendio del Borgo ” is roused to meet and to combat a fully understood peril proceeding from a natural cause.
As in the Heliodorus, the most dramatic of all his works, Raphael had symbolized the triumph of the Church over those who would rob her of her material wealth, so in the Miracle of Bolsena {Fig. 14) he showed her power over those who would loosen her spiritual hold upon the minds of men. Here Heaven again interferes to convince an unbelieving Bohemian priest who had impiously doubted the truth of transubstantiation while celebrating mass in the church of Santa Christina at Bolsena, by causing blood to flow from the sacred wafer. A thrill of wonder at the miracle runs through the multitude thronging the steps behind the praying Priest, whose disbelief has given way before tangible proof:
The division of the composition into two parts was in some measure necessitated by a large window which pierces the wall surface, leaving an upper space occupied by the altar, on either side of which kneel the Priest and the Pope, and two side spaces filled with their respective followers, – men, women, and children to the left, cardinals, prelates, and attendants to the right. The cardinals are Raphael Riario, cousin to Julius II., and the Cardinal di San Giorgio, Michelangelo’s early patron ; the prelates and their attendants are also portraits. Idealism and realism have indeed rarely been more strongly contrasted and more justly balanced than in the corresponding parts of a composition, which is admirably balanced, varied in line and attitude, and most harmonious in spirit.
It was not completed when Julius II. ended a life whose ruling idea was expressed in his dying words, ” Fuori d’ Italia, gli Francesi e gli barbari.” His last years had been full of anxiety and disappointment, but before his death the tide had turned in his favor. In 1511 he besieged and took Mirandola, but within a twelvemonth he lost Bologna, and heard with inexpressible anger that his statue had been overthrown and broken up by the Bentivogli on their restoration to power through French aid. To combat Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, and his powerful supporters, Maximilian, Emperor elect, and Louis XII., King of France, who were arrayed against him with half the Christian world at their backs, and to awe the heretic council which had assembled at Pisa to call him to account for his high-handed acts, Julius formed the Holy Alliance with Ferdinand of Arragon and the Venetians, and by their aid endeavored to restore the Medici, in order to punish Soderini, the Florentine gonfaloniere, for having consented to the assembling of the council. The battle-field of Ravenna was indeed gained by the French ; but with the death of their hero, Gaston de Foix, the dissolution of their alliance with Maximilian, and the arrival of the Swiss, they were obliged to stand on the defensive, and the Pope had the consolation of knowing that their departure was only a question of time. The submission of Ravenna, Parma, and Piacenza, and finally of Bologna, which had most of all sinned against him, gave him further causes for rejoicing, and this was greatly augmented by the overthrow of popular government at Florence, and the final restoration of the Medici to power (August, 1512). Among the Italian prisoners taken by the French at Ravenna was the Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who in his efforts to succor the dying upon the battle-field narrowly escaped with his life, and lost his liberty. He, however, soon regained it, for when the French began their hasty retreat across the Alps he effected his escape and returned to Florence, where he remained until early in the new year, when news came of the death of Julius II. Hastening to Rome, he arrived there on the 6th of March, 1513, and found the papal conclave assembled which, on the 13th, saluted him as Pope under the name of Leo X.
” Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora ; tempora Mayors Olim habuit ; nunc sua tempora Pallas habuit.”
Or, as another transparency put it, even more pithily, on the night when the city was illuminated in honor of his election,
“Mars fuit. Pallas est. Cypra semper ero.”