Book: The Old Masters and Their Pictures

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'The belief of the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the
sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed
by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century,
beginning with the verse--

"Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla."

It may be inferred that this hymn, admitted into the liturgy of
the Roman Church, gave sanction to the adoption of the sibyls
into Christian art. They are seen from this time accompanying the
prophets and apostles, in the cyclical decorations of the
church.... But the highest honour that art has rendered to the
sibyls has been by the hand of Michael Angelo,
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Here in the conception of a
mysterious order of women, placed above and without all
considerations of the graceful or the individual, the great
master was peculiarly in his element. They exactly fitted his
standard, of art, not always sympathetic, nor comprehensible to
the average human mind, of which the grand in form and the
abstract in expression were the first and last conditions. In
this respect, the sibyls on the Sistine Chapel ceiling are more
Michael Angelesque than their companions the prophets. For these,
while types of the highest monumental treatment, are yet men,
while the sibyls belong to a distinct class of beings, who convey
the impression of the very obscurity in which their history is
wrapt--creatures who have lived far from the abodes of men, who
are alike devoid of the expression of feminine sweetness, human
sympathy, or sacramental beauty; who are neither Christians nor
Jewesses, Witches nor Graces, yet living, grand, beautiful, and
true, according to laws revealed to the great Florentine genius
only.

Thus their figures may be said to be unique, as the offspring of
a peculiar sympathy between the master's mind and his subject. To
this sympathy may be ascribed the prominence and size given them,
both prophets and sibyls, as compared to their usual relation to
the subjects they environ. They sit here on twelve throne-like
niches, more like presiding deities, each wrapt in
self-contemplation, than as tributary witnesses to the truth and
omnipotence of Him they are intended to announce. Thus they form
a gigantic frame-work round the subjects of the Creation, of
which the birth of Eve, as the type of the Nativity, is the
intentional centre. For some reason, the twelve figures are not
prophets and sibyls alternately--there being only five sibyls to
seven prophets,--so that the prophets come together at one angle.
Books and scrolls are given indiscriminately to them.

'The Sibylla Persica, supposed to be the oldest of the sisterhood, holds
the book close to her eyes, as if from dimness of sight, which fact,
contradicted as it is by a frame of obviously Herculean strength, gives
a mysterious intentness to the action.

'The Sibylla Libyca, of equally powerful proportions, but less closely
draped, is grandly wringing herself to lift a massive volume from a
height above her head on to her knees.

'The Sibylla Cumana, also aged, and with her head covered, is reading
with her volume at a distance from her eyes.

'The Sibylla Delphica, with waving hair escaping from her turban, is a
beautiful young being, the most human of all, gazing into vacancy or
futurity. She holds a scroll.

'The Sibylla Erythraea, grand, bare-headed creature, sits reading
intently with crossed legs, about to turn over her book.

'The prophets are equally grand in structure, and though, as we have
said, not more than men, yet they are the only men that could well bear
the juxtaposition with their stupendous female colleagues. Ezekiel,
between Erythraea and Persica, has a scroll in his hand that hangs by his
side, just cast down, as he turns eagerly to listen to some voice.

'Jeremiah, a magnificent figure, with elbow on knee and head on hand,
wrapt in meditation appropriate to one called to utter lamentation and
woe. He has neither book nor scroll.

'Jonah is also without either. His position is strained and ungraceful,
looking upwards, and apparently remonstrating with the Almighty upon the
destruction of the gourd, a few leaves of which are seen above him. His
hands are placed together with a strange and trivial action, supposed to
denote the counting on his fingers the number of days he was in the
fish's belly. A formless marine monster is seen at his side.

'Daniel has a book on his lap, with one hand on it. He is young, and a
piece of lion's skin seems to allude to his history.'[9]

In the recesses between the prophets and sibyls are a series of lovely
family groups, representing the genealogy of the Virgin, and expressive
of calm expectation of the future. The four corners of the ceiling
contain groups illustrative of the power of the Lord displayed in the
especial deliverances of his chosen people. Near the altar are:

Right, The Deliverance of the Israelites by the Brazen Serpent.

Left, The Execution of Haman.

Near the entrance are:

Right, Judith and Holofernes.

Left, David and Goliath.[10]

Michael Angelo was thirty-nine years of age when he painted the ceiling
of the Sistine. When he began to paint the 'Day of Judgment' he was
above sixty years of age, and his great rival, Raphael, had already been
dead thirteen years.

The picture of the 'Day of Judgment,' with much that renders it
marvellous and awful, has a certain coarseness of conception and
execution. The moment chosen is that in which the Lord says, 'Depart
from me, ye cursed,' and the idea and even attributes of the principal
figure are taken from Orcagna's old painting in the Campo Santo. But
with all Michael Angelo's advantages, he has by no means improved on the
original idea. He has robbed the figure of the Lord of its transcendant
majesty; he has not been able to impart to the ranks of the blessed the
look of blessedness which 'Il Beato' himself might have conveyed. The
chief excellence of the picture is in the ranks of the condemned, who
writhe and rebel against their agonies. No wonder that the picture is
sombre and dreadful.

Of the allegorical figures of 'Night' and 'Morning' in the chapel of San
Lorenzo, there are casts at the Crystal Palace.

A comparison and a contrast have been instituted between Michael Angelo
and Milton, and Raphael and Shakespeare. There may be something in them,
but, as in the case of broken metaphors, they will not bear being pushed
to a logical conclusion or picked to pieces. The very transparent
comparison which matches Michael Angelo with his own countryman, Dante,
is after all more felicitous and truer. Michael Angelo with Lionardo are
the great chiefs of the Florentine School.

Raphael Sanzio, or Santi of Urbino, the head of the Roman School, was
one of those very exceptional men who seem born to happiness, to inspire
love and only love, to pass through the world making friends and
disarming enemies, who are fully armed to confer pleasure while almost
incapable of either inflicting or receiving pain. To this day his
exceptional fortune stands Raphael's memory in good stead, since for one
man or woman who yearns after the austere righteousness and priceless
tenderness of Michael Angelo, there are ten who yield with all their
hearts to the gay, sweet gentleness and generosity of Raphael. No doubt
it was also in his favour as a painter, that though a man of highly
cultivated tastes, 'in close intimacy and correspondence with most of
the celebrated men of his time, and interested in all that was going
forward,' he did not, especially in his youth, spend his strength on a
variety of studies, but devoted himself to painting. While he thus
vindicated his share of the breadth of genius of his country and time,
by giving to the world the loveliest Madonnas and Child-Christs, the
most dramatic of battle-pieces, the finest of portraits, his noble and
graceful fertility of invention and matchless skill of execution were
confined to and concentrated on painting. He did not diverge long or far
into the sister arts of architecture and sculpture, though his classic
researches in the excavations of Rome were keen and zealous; a heap of
ruins having given to the world in 1504 the group of the
that a writer of his day could record that 'Raphael had sought and found
in Rome another Rome.'

Raphael was born in the town of Urbino, and was the son of a painter of
the Umbrian School, who very early destined the boy to his future
career, and promoted his destination by all the efforts in Giovanni
Santi's power, including the intention of sending away and apprenticing
the little lad to the best master of his time, Perugino, so called from
the town where he resided, Perugia. Raphael's mother died when he was
only eight years of age, and his father died when he was no more than
eleven years, before the plans for his education were put into action.
But no stroke of outward calamity, or loss--however severe, could annul
Raphael's birthright of universal favour. His step-mother, the uncles
who were his guardians, his clever, perverse, unscrupulous master, all
joined in a common love of Raphael and determination to promote his
interests.

Raphael at the age of twelve years went to Perugia to work under
Perugino, and remained with his master till he was nearly twenty years
of age. In that interval he painted industriously, making constant
progress, always in the somewhat hard, but finished, style of Perugino,
while already showing a predilection for what was to prove Raphael's
favourite subject, the Madonna and Child. At this period he painted his
famous _Lo Sposalizio_ or the 'Espousals,' the marriage of the Virgin
Mary with Joseph, now at Milan. In 1504 he visited Florence, remaining
only for a short time, but making the acquaintance of Fra Bartolommeo
and Ghirlandajo, seeing the cartoons of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, and
from that time displaying a marked improvement in drawing. Indeed
nothing is more conspicuous in Raphael's genius in contra-distinction to
Michael Angelo's, than the receptive character of Raphael's mind, his
power of catching up an impression from without, and the candour and
humility with which he availed himself unhesitatingly of the assistance
lent him by others.

Returning soon to Florence, Raphael remained there till 1508, when he
was twenty-five years, drawing closer the valuable friendships he had
already formed, and advancing with rapid strides in his art, until his
renown was spread all over Italy, and with reason, since already, while
still young, he had painted his 'Madonna of the Goldfinch,' in the
Florentine Gallery, and his 'La Belle Jardiniere,' or Madonna in a
garden among flowers, now in the Louvre.

In his twenty-fifth year Raphael was summoned to Rome to paint for Pope
Julius II. My readers will remember that Michael Angelo in the abrupt
severity of his prime of manhood, was soon to paint the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel for the same despotic and art-loving Pope, who had
brought Raphael hardly more than a stripling to paint the '_Camere_' or
'_Stanze_' chambers of the Vatican.

The first of the halls which Raphael painted (though not the first in
order) is called the Camera della Segnatura (in English, signature), and
represents Theology, Poetry, Philosophy, with the Sciences, Arts, and
Jurisprudence. The second is the 'Stanza d'Eliodoro,' or the room of
Heliodorus, and contains the grandest painting of all, in the expulsion
of Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem (taken from Maccabees), the
Miracle of Bolsena, Attila, king of the Huns, terrified by the
apparition of St Peter and St Paul, and St Peter delivered from prison.
The third stanza painted by Raphael is the 'Stanza dell' Incendio' (the
conflagration), so called from the extinguishing of the fire in the
Borgo by a supposed miracle, being the most conspicuous scene in
representations of events taken from the lives of Popes Leo III, and
IV.; and the fourth chamber, which was left unfinished by Raphael, and
completed by his scholars, is the 'Sala di Constantino,' and contains
incidents from the life of the Emperor Constantine, including the
splendid battle-piece between Constantine and Maxentius. At these
chambers, or at the designs for them, during the popedoms of Julius II.,
who died in the course of the painting of the Camere, and Leo X., for a
period of twelve years, till Raphael's death in 1520, after which the
'Sala di Constantino' was completed by his scholars.

Raphael has also left in the Vatican a series of small pictures from the
Old Testament, known as Raphael's Bible. This series decorates the
thirteen cupolas of the 'Loggie,' or open galleries, running round three
sides of an open court. Another work undertaken by Raphael should have
still more interest for us. Leo X., resolving to substitute woven for
painted tapestry round the lower walls of the interior of the Sistine
Chapel, commanded Raphael to furnish drawings to the Flemish weavers,
and thence arose eleven cartoons, seven of which have been preserved,
have become the property of England, and are the glory of the Kensington
Museum. The subjects of the cartoons in the seven which have been saved,
are 'The Death of Ananias,' 'Elymas the Sorcerer struck with Blindness,'
'The Healing of the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,' 'The
Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' 'Paul and Barnabas at Lystra,' 'St Paul
Preaching at Athens,' and 'The Charge to St Peter.' The four cartoons
which are lost, were 'The Stoning of St Stephen,' 'The Conversion of St
Paul,' 'Paul in Prison,' and 'The Coronation of the Virgin.'

In those cartoons figures above life-size were drawn with chalk upon
strong paper, and coloured in distemper, and Raphael received for his
work four hundred and thirty gold ducats (about _L650_), while the
Flemish weavers received for their work in wools, silk, and gold, fifty
thousand gold ducats. The designs were cut up in strips for the
weavers' use, and while some strips were destroyed, the rest lay in a
warehouse at Arras, till Rubens became aware of their existence, and
advised Charles I, to buy the set, to be employed in the tapestry
manufactory established by James I. at Mortlake. Brought to this country
in the slips which the weavers had copied, the fate of the cartoons was
still precarious. Cromwell bought them in Charles I.'s art collection,
and Louis XIV, sought, but failed, to re-buy them. They fell into
farther neglect, and were well-nigh forgotten, when Sir Godfrey Kneller
recalled them to notice, and induced William III, to have the slips
pasted together, and stretched upon linen, and put in a room set apart
for them at Hampton Court, whence they were transferred, within the last
ten years, for the greater advantage of artists and the public, to
Kensington Museum.

The woven tapestries for which the cartoons were designed had quite as
chequered a career. In the two sacks of Rome by French soldiers, the
tapestries were seized, carried off, and two of them burnt for the
bullion in the thread. At last they were restored to the Vatican, where
they hang in their faded magnificence, a monument of Leo X, and of
Raphael. An additional set of ten tapestry cartoons were supplied to the
Vatican by Raphael's scholars.

Raphael painted for the Chigi family in their palace, which is now the
Villa Farnesina, scenes from the history of Cupid and Psyche, and the
Triumph of Galatea, subjects which show how the passion for classical
mythology that distinguishes the next generation, was beginning to work.
To these last years belong his 'Madonna di San Sisto,' so named from its
having been painted for the convent of St Sixtus at Piacenza, and his
last picture, the 'Transfiguration,' with which he was still engaged
when death met him unexpectedly.

Raphael, as the Italians say, lived more like a '_principe_' (prince)
than a '_pittore_' (painter). He had a house in Rome, and a villa in the
neighbourhood, and on his death left a considerable fortune to his
heirs. There has not been wanting a rumour that his life of a principe
was a dissipated and prodigal life; but this ugly rumour, even if it had
more evidence to support it, is abundantly disproven by the nature of
Raphael's work, and by the enormous amount of that work, granting him
the utmost assistance from his crowd of scholars. He had innumerable
commissions, and retained an immense school from all parts of Italy, the
members of which adored their master. Raphael had the additional
advantage of having many of his pictures well engraved by a contemporary
engraver named Raimondi.

Like Giotto, Raphael was the friend of the most distinguished Italians
of his day, including Count Castiglione, and the poet Ariosto. He was
notably the warm friend of his fellow-painters both at home and abroad,
with the exception of Michael Angelo. A drawing of his own, which
Raphael sent, in his kindly interchange of such sketches, to Albert
Duerer, is, I think, preserved at Nueremberg. The sovereign princes of
Italy, above all Leo X., were not contented with being munificent
patrons to Raphael, they treated him with the most marked consideration.
The Cardinal Bibbiena proposed the painter's marriage with his niece,
ensuring her a dowry of three thousand gold crowns, but Maria di
Bibbiena died young, ere the marriage could be accomplished; and
Raphael, who was said to be little disposed to the match, did not long
survive her. He caught cold, as some report, from his engrossing
personal superintendence of the Roman excavations; and, as others
declare, from his courtly assiduity in keeping an appointment with the
Pope, was attacked by fever, and died on his birth-day, April 6th, 1520,
having completed his thirty-seventh year.

All Rome and Italy mourned for him. When his body lay in state, to be
looked at and wept over by multitudes, his great unfinished picture of
the 'Transfiguration' was hung above the bed. He was buried in a spot
chosen by himself in his lifetime, and, as it happened, not far from the
resting-place of his promised bride. Doubts having been raised as to
Raphael's grave, search was made, and his body was exhumed in 1833, and
re-buried with great pomp. Raphael's life and that of Rubens form the
ideal painter's life--bountiful, splendid, unclouded, and terminating
ere it sees eclipse or decay--to all in whom the artistic temperament is
united to a genial, sensuous, pleasure-loving nature.

Raphael was not above the middle height, and slightly made. He was
sallow in colour, with brown eyes, and a full yet delicate mouth; but
his beautiful face, like that of our English Shakespeare, is familiar to
most of us. With regard to Raphael's face, the amount of womanliness in
it is a striking characteristic. One hears sometimes that no man's
character is complete without its share of womanliness: surely Raphael
had a double share, for womanliness is the most distinctive quality in
his face, along with that vague shade of pensiveness which we find not
infrequently, but strangely enough, in those faces which have been
associated with the happiest spirits and the brightest fortunes.

Raphael and his scholars painted and drew about nine hundred pictures
and sketches, including a hundred and twenty Madonnas, eight of which
are in private collections in England. Of Raphael's greatness, Kugler
writes that 'it is not so much in kind as in degree. No master left
behind _so many_ really excellent works as he, whose days were so early
numbered; in none has there been observed so little that is unpleasant.'
All authorities agree in ascribing much of Raphael's power to his purely
unselfish nature and aim. His excellence seems to lie in the nearly
perfect expression of material beauty and harmony, together with
grandeur of design and noble working out of thought. We shall see that
this devotion to material beauty has been made something of a reproach
to Raphael, as it certainly degenerated into a snare in the hands of his
followers, while unquestionably the universal appreciation of Raphael's
work, distinguished from the partial appreciation bestowed on the great
works of others, proceeds from this evident material beauty which is
open to all.

Then, again, Raphael, far more than Andrea del Sarto, deserved to be
called 'faultless;' and this general absence of defects and equality of
excellence is a great element of Raphael's wide popularity; for, as one
can observe for one's self, in regarding a work of art, there is always
a large proportion of the spectators who will seize on an error, dwell
on it, and be incapable of shaking off its influence, and rising into
the higher rank of critics, who discover and ponder over beauties. I
would have it considered also, that this equality of excellence does not
necessarily proceed always from a higher aim, but may arise rather from
an unconsciously lower aim.

The single reproach brought against Raphael as a painter is
that--according to some witnesses only, for most deny the
implication--Raphael so delighted in material beauty that he became
enslaved by it, till it diminished his spiritual insight. It is an
incontestable truth that in Raphael, as in all the great Italian
painters of his century, there was a falling away from the simple
earnestness, the exceeding reverence, the endless patience, the
self-abstraction, and self-devotion of the earliest Italian and Flemish
painters. Therefore there has been within the last fifty or sixty years
that movement in modern art, which is called Pre-raphaelitism, and which
is, in fact, a revolt against subjection to Raphael, and his supposed
undue exaltation of material beauty, and subjection of truth to
beauty--so called. But we must not fall into the grave mistake of
imagining that there was any want of vigour and variety in Raphael's
grace and tenderness, or that he could not in his greatest works rise
into a grandeur in keeping with his subject. Tire as we may of hearing
Raphael called the king of painters, as the Greeks tired of hearing
Aristides called 'the just,' this fact remains: no painter has left
behind him such a mass of surpassingly good work; in no other work is
there the same charm of greatest beauty and harmony.

It is hard for me to give you an idea in so short a space of Raphael's
work. I must content myself with quoting descriptions of two of his
Stanze, those of the Heliodorus and the Segnatura. 'Heliodorus driven
out of the Temple (2 Maccabees iii.). In the background Onias the
priest is represented praying for Divine interposition;--in the
foreground Heliodorus, pursued by two avenging angels, is endeavouring
to bear away the treasures of the temple. Amid the group on the left is
seen Julius II., in his chair of state, attended by his secretaries. One
of the bearers in front is Marc-Antonio Raimondi, the engraver of
Raphael's designs. The man with the inscription, "Jo Petro de Folicariis
Cremonen," was secretary of briefs to Pope Julius. Here you may fancy
you hear the thundering approach of the heavenly warrior, and the
neighing of his steed; while in the different groups who are plundering
the treasures of the temple, and in those who gaze intently on the
sudden consternation of Heliodorus, without being able to divine its
cause, we see the expression of terror, amazement, joy, humility, and
every passion to which human nature is exposed.'[11]

'The Stanza della Segnatura is so called from a judicial assembly once
held here. The frescoes in this chamber are illustrative of the Virtues
of Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, and Jurisprudence, who are represented
on the ceiling by Raphael, in the midst of arabesques by _Sodoma_. The
square pictures by Raphael refer:--the Fall of Man to Theology; the
Study of the Globe to Philosophy; the Flaying of Marsyas to Poetry; and
the Judgment of Solomon to Jurisprudence.

'_Entrance Wall_.--"The School of Athens." Raphael consulted Ariosto as
to the arrangement of its 52 figures. In the centre, on the steps of a
portico, are seen Plato and Aristotle, Plato pointing to heaven and
Aristotle to earth. On the left is Socrates conversing with his pupils,
amongst whom is a young warrior, probably Alcibiades. Lying upon the
steps in front is Diogenes. To his left, Pythagoras is writing on his
knee, and near him, with ink and pen, is Empedocles. The white mantle is
Francesco Maria della Rovere, nephew of Julius II. On the right is
Archimedes drawing a geometrical problem upon the floor. The young man
near him with uplifted hands is Federigo II., Duke of Mantua. Behind
these are Zoroaster, Ptolemy, one with a terrestrial, the other with a
celestial globe, addressing two figures, which represent Raphael and his
master Perugino. The drawing in brown upon the socle beneath this
fresco, is by _Pierino del Vaga_, and represents the death of
Archimedes.

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