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  MASTERPIECES
  IN COLOUR
  EDITED BY - -
  T. LEMAN HARE


  RAPHAEL

  1483-1520




  "MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES


    ARTIST.                  AUTHOR.
  VELAZQUEZ.             S. L. BENSUSAN.
  REYNOLDS.              S. L. BENSUSAN.
  TURNER.                C. LEWIS HIND.
  ROMNEY.                C. LEWIS HIND.
  GREUZE.                ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
  BOTTICELLI.            HENRY B. BINNS.
  ROSSETTI.              LUCIEN PISSARRO.
  BELLINI.               GEORGE HAY.
  FRA ANGELICO.          JAMES MASON.
  REMBRANDT.             JOSEF ISRAELS.
  LEIGHTON.              A. LYS BALDRY.
  RAPHAEL.               PAUL G. KONODY.
  HOLMAN HUNT.           MARY E. COLERIDGE.
  TITIAN.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
  MILLAIS.               A. LYS BALDRY.
  CARLO DOLCI.           GEORGE HAY.
  GAINSBOROUGH.          MAX ROTHSCHILD.
  TINTORETTO.            S. L. BENSUSAN.
  LUINI.                 JAMES MASON.
  FRANZ HALS.            EDGCUMBE STALEY.
  VAN DYCK.              PERCY M. TURNER.
  LEONARDO DA VINCI.     M. W. BROCKWELL.
  RUBENS.                S. L. BENSUSAN.
  WHISTLER.              T. MARTIN WOOD.
  HOLBEIN.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
  BURNE-JONES.           A. LYS BALDRY.
  VIGEE LE BRUN.         C. HALDANE MACFALL.
  CHARDIN.               PAUL G. KONODY.
  FRAGONARD.             C. HALDANE MACFALL.
  MEMLINC.               W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
  CONSTABLE.             C. LEWIS HIND.
  RAEBURN.               JAMES L. CAW.
  JOHN S. SARGENT.       T. MARTIN WOOD.
  LAWRENCE.              S. L. BENSUSAN.
  DURER.                 H. E. A. FURST.
  MILLET.                PERCY M. TURNER.
  WATTEAU.               C. LEWIS HIND.
  HOGARTH.               C. LEWIS HIND.
  MURILLO.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
  WATTS.                 W. LOFTUS HARE.
  INGRES.                A. J. FINBERG.
  COROT.                 SIDNEY ALLNUTT.
  DELACROIX.             PAUL G. KONODY.

  _Others in Preparation._




[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE ANSIDEI MADONNA. Frontispiece

(In the National Gallery, London)

Better than any other picture by Raphael, this important altar-piece
shows the precociousness of Raphael's genius, for it was painted at
Perugia in 1506, when the master had scarcely passed into the
twenty-third year of his life. He had then just returned from Florence,
but, probably to humour his patrons, the Ansidei family, he reverted in
this picture once again to the formal manner of his second master,
Perugino. The "Ansidei Madonna" has the distinction of being the most
costly picture at the National Gallery--it was purchased in 1885 from
the Duke of Marlborough for L70,000.]




  RAPHAEL

  BY PAUL G. KONODY

  ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
  REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

  [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM]

  LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
  NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.




  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  Plate
     I. The Ansidei Madonna               Frontispiece
          In the National Gallery, London

                                                  Page
    II. The Madonna del Gran Duca                   14
          In the Pitti Palace, Florence

   III. The Madonna della Sedia                     24
          In the Pitti Palace, Florence

    IV. "La Belle Jardiniere"                       34
          In the Louvre

     V. The Madonna of the Tower                    40
          In the National Gallery, London

    VI. Pope Julius II.                             50
          In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

   VII. Putto with Garland                          60
          In the Academy of St. Luca, Rome

  VIII. Portrait of Raphael                         70
          In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence




I


"And I tell you that to paint one beautiful woman, I should need to see
several beautiful women, and to have you with me to choose the best,"
wrote Raphael, then at the zenith of his fame and good fortune, to his
life-long friend Count Baldassare Castiglione, who--the ideal courtier
himself--has given the world that immortal monument of Renaissance
culture, the Book of the Courtier. In penning these lines the prince of
painters intended, perhaps, no more than a pretty compliment to one who
was himself a model of courtesy and graceful speech, but the words
would gain deep significance if _picture_ were substituted for _woman_,
and if Castiglione were taken to signify the personification of
intellect and learning. For the beauty of Raphael's art, which in the
course of four centuries has lost none of its hold upon the admiration
of mankind, is distilled from the various elements of beauty contained
in the art that had gone before him and was being created around him;
and in choosing the best, at least as far as idea and conception are
concerned, he was guided by the deepest thinkers and keenest intellects
of what were then the world's greatest centres of culture.

Raphael was, indeed, born under a happy constellation. He was not a
giant of intellect, nor an epoch-making genius; as Michelangelo said of
him, he owed his art less to nature than to study; but he was born at a
time when two centuries of gradual artistic development had led up to a
point where an artist was needed to gather up the diverging threads and
bring the movement to a culmination, which will stand for all times as
a standard of perfection. Advantages of birth and early surroundings,
charm of appearance and disposition which made him a favourite wherever
he went, receptivity, adaptability, and application, and above all an
early and easy mastery of technique, were combined in Raphael to lead
him to this achievement. The smooth unclouded progress of his life from
recognition to fame, from prosperity to affluence, is not the turbulent
way of genius. Genius walks a sad and lonely path. Michelangelo, the
turbulent spirit, morose and dissatisfied, Lionardo da Vinci, pursuing
his high ideals without a thought of worldly success until his lonely
old age sees him expatriated and contemplating the fruitlessness of all
his labours--these men of purest genius have little in common with the
pliant courtier Raphael, the head himself of a little court of faithful
followers. The story goes that Michelangelo, in the bitterness of his
spirit, when meeting his happy rival at the head of his usual army of
some fifty dependants on his way to the Papal court, addressed him with
the words "You walk like the sheriff with his _posse comitatus_." And
Raphael, quick at repartee, retorted "And you, like an executioner
going to the scaffold." Whether the anecdote be true or not, it marks
the difference between the course of talent--albeit the rarest
talent--and that of genius.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE MADONNA DEL GRAN DUCA

(In the Pitti Palace, Florence)

This picture, remarkable for the effective simplicity of its design and
for the purity of the Virgin's face, derives the name by