Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/168

 RAMENGHI— RAPHAEL. 187 introduced the Roman style into that city, and improyed the character of its school. He was, says Kugler, pre- served from the degenerate mannerism into which so many of the scholars of Raphael were betrayed, by the sim- plicity of representation he had early acquired dming his connection with Franda. His good colouring, as Waa- gen has^ remarked, was probably from the same sonrce. He aimed at gran- deur and freedom, and though pos- sessing less vigour than Julio Romano, or Perin^ del Vaga, he acquired more of the peculiar grace of Raphael's style, who with him even superseded nature; but he was deficient in the power necessaiy to adequately animate the grand forms he selected; and he is frequently accordingly little more than a simple copyist of Raphael, or even of Francia; he excelled in in- fants. He was much admired by the Garraoci and their school. His pic- tures are rare in galleries — the Ma- donna in Glory, at Dresden, is one of the finest Giovanni Battista Bagna- cavallo, who assisted Primaticcio, at Fontainebleau, and Vasari, at Rome, was the son of Bartolomeo Ramenghi. Works. Bologna, San Michele in Bosco, remains of frescoes : Santa Maria Madalena, Assumption of the Virgin, &c, ; San Donate ; Ai Servi ; Sant' Agostino; SS. Vitale ed Agri- cola ; San Stefano, dro. : and in the Academy, a Holy Family. Rome, Co- lonna Palace, the sketch of a Troop of Warriors before a City. Dresden Gal- leiy, Madonna in Glory, with four Saints. Berlin Gallery, St. Agnes with St Petronius, holding the model of Bologna, and another Saint Louvre, the Circumcision. {Baruffaldi, Lanzi, Vuccolini.) RAPHAEL, or Rastaello Santi, or Samzio, b, at Urbino, April 6, 1483, d, at Rome, April 6, 1520. Roman SohooL He received the first in- structions in his art fit)m his father, Giovanni Santi ; but having lost both his parents when very young, he was placed, about 1495, by his uncles Simone Ciarla and Bartolomeo Santi with Pietro Perugino, at Perugia. In 1502 or 1503, he was in Siena, assist- ing Pinturicchio with his frescoes, in the library of the Duomo; and in 1504 he paid his first visit to Florence, where, with the exception of short intervals spent at Perugia and Bo- logna, Raphael resided more than three years, and made the acquaint- ance of Fra Bartolomeo, Michelangelo, and other great artists of that remark- able age. In 1508 he was invited to Rome by Julius II., to paint the Vati- can Stanze ; Michelangelo went in the same year to Rome, and commenced preparations for his frescoes of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The remaining twelve years of his short life Raphael passed in Rome. The works of Raphael are extremely numerous, in oil and in fresco; and they are painted in three several styles : — ^in what is called his first, or Perugino style ; his second, or Floren- tine style; and his third, or Roman style. Each style has its peculiar merit, and all show a progress analo- gous to the course of the revival of art itself; in the first, timid and imita- tive only of the example of his master Perugino, a traditionary or probationary style; in the second, dating from the year 1504, an eclectic style is developed. Raphael, no longer bound by the ex- ample of Perugino, endeavoured to form a style of his ovm, from the various qualities displayed by the great masters of the new world of art, opened up to him by his visit to Florence, in the works of Fra Bartolomeo, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and of Francia. His colouring, light and shade, and form, now all assume a more vigorous character, and his composition already