Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain04cham).pdf/27



1500, and apprenticed him to Perugino, by whom he was employed with other assistants in painting the frescos of the Sala del Cambio, then in progress. The master returned to Florence (1502), and Raphael followed him two years later, after having painted a Crucifixion (1500), Earl Dudley, London; a Coronation of the Virgin (1503), Vatican Gallery, Rome; and assisted Pinturicchio at Siena in decorating the so-called Library of the Cathedral with frescos. After remaining at Florence for perhaps a year, during which he painted the Marriage of the Virgin, Brera, Milan, for S. Francesco, Città di Castello, Raphael returned to Perugia (1505) to commence a fresco of the Trinity, at S. Severo, which was finished by Perugino (1521). In 1505 he was commissioned to paint a Coronation of the Virgin, for the Convent of Monteluce, at Perugia. He commenced it many years later at Rome, and it was finished five years after his death, by Giulio Romano and Il Fattore. Returning to Florence in 1506, at the time when Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were engaged upon their celebrated cartoons for the great Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, Raphael studied both, but especially those of Leonardo, who, together with Fra Bartolommeo, exercised great influence over him during his two years' residence in that city, which, with the exception of a short visit to Urbino and Bologna, lasted until the summer of 1508. In the pictures painted by Raphael at Florence, a growing individuality is distinctly visible. Umbrian in spirit, they show a tenderness of feeling, an element of ideality, a love of nature, unknown to the art of Perugino. Called to Rome in 1508 by Pope Julius II., whose favour he secured through the good offices of his compatriot and relative, the architect Bramante, Raphael began his great series of frescos in the Stanze of the Vatican by painting the Dispute of the Sacrament (1508-11),—the last work in his second or Florentine style. He had, however, already given token, in the Entombment (1507), Borghese Gallery, Rome, of the dramatic and constructive elements of his genius, which were to find opportunity for a full display in those master works of his third or Roman manner,—the Heliodorus (1512) and the School of Athens (1511). During the twelve years of his life at Rome, in the service of Julius II. and Leo X., Raphael accomplished a prodigious amount of work as painter, architect, sculptor, and archæologist. His wonderful genius, his personal charm, his engaging manner, and his obliging disposition, won him troops of admirers, friends, and scholars, whose flattering praises served but to stimulate him to renewed effort. Eager only to perfect his work, and incapable of jealousy, he studied the grandiose style of Michelangelo and the rich colour of Sebastiano del Piombo that he might improve his own style and colour, and to the day of his death achieved ever-increasing excellence. Leo X. made him inspector of all marbles dug up at Rome, commissioned him to make plans and elevations of her ancient edifices, and on the 1st of August, 1514, appointed him to succeed Bramante as head architect at St. Peter's. Some idea of his work under both Popes can be formed from the following general sketch: Between his arrival in Rome in 1508 and the death of Julius II. in 1513, he painted in the Vatican the frescos of the Camera della Segnatura, the Heliodorus, and a part of the Miracle of Bolsena in the Stanza d'Eliodoro, the Isaiah (1512), S. Agostino, the Madonna di Foligno (1511), with other pictures and portraits, such as those of Julius II., Palazzo Pitti, the Fornarina (1509), Palazzo Barberini, etc. Under Leo X. Raphael painted in the Vatican the Attila, the Liberation of St. Peter, with the ceiling decorations in the same chamber; and among easel pictures produced the Madonna del Pesce (1514), Madrid