Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/292

Rh 274 R A P R A P abundant mucilaginous slime, and by taking up oxygen it acquires a peculiar disagreeable odour and an acrid taste. Refined by the ordinary processes (see OILS, vol. xvii. p. 743), the oil assumes a clear golden yellow colour. In specific gravity it ranges between 0'9112 and 0'9117 in the raw state, and from 0*9127 to 0'9136 when refined ; the solidifying point is from - 2 to - 10" C. Rape oil consists of a mixture of three simple fats or glycerides of fatty acids the glyceride of oleic acid (olein), of stearic acid (stearin), and of brassic acid, the latter being a fat found hitherto only in oils from the Crudferse, and from grape seeds. The olein of rape oil differs from ordinary olein in not yielding sebacylic acid on destructive distillation. The principal uses of rape oil are for lubrication and lighting ; but since the introduction of mineral oils for both these purposes the importance of rape has considerably decreased. It is but little employed in soap-making, as it saponifies with difficulty and yields only an indifferent product. In Germany it is very considerably used as a salad oil under the name of Schmalzol, being for that purpose freed from its biting taste by being mixed with starch, heated till the starch is carbonized, and filtered after the oil has cooled. The offensive taste of rape oil may also be removed by treatment with a small proportion of sweet spirit of nitre (nitrous ether). In the East Indies rape oil and its equivalents, known under various names, are the most important of oils for native use. They are largely consumed as food instead of ghi under the name of " metah " or sweet oil, but for all other purposes the same sub- stance is known as "kurwah" or bitter oil Most natives prefer it for the preparation of their curries and other hot dishes. Rape oil is the subject of extensive adulteration, principally with the cheaper hemp oil, rosin oil, and mineral oils. These sophistications can be most conveniently detected, first by taste and next by saponifica- tion, rosin oil and mineral oil remaining unsaponified, hemp oil giving a greenish soap, while rape oil yields a soap with a yellow tinge. With concentrated sulphuric acid, fuming nitric acid, nitrous acid, and other reagents rape oil gives also characteristic colorations ; but these are modified according to the degree of purity of the oil itself. The presence of sulphur in rape and other cruciferous oils also affords a ready means for their identification. Lead plaster (emplastrum lithargyri) boiled in rape oil dissolves, and, sulphide of lead being formed, the oil becomes brown or black. Other lead compounds give the same black coloration from the formation of sulphide. RAPHAEL (bssn, " God heals ") first appears in litera- ture in the book of Tobit, where in human disguise and under the name of Azarias (" God helps ") he accompanies Tobias in his adventurous journey and conquers the demon Asmodaeus. He is said to be "one of the seven angels [archangels] who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One." In the book of Enoch Raphael is the angel of the spirits of man, and it is his business to gather the souls of the dead in the place where they are reserved till the day of judg- ment, a conception which seems to imply a derivation from D^XETI, " ghosts." In later Midrash Raphael appears as the angel commissioned to put down the evil spirits that vexed the sons of Noah with plagues and sicknesses after the flood, and he it was who taught men the use of simples and furnished materials for the "Book of Noah," the earliest treatise on materia medica (Ronsch, Buck der Jubilaen, p. 385 sq.). RAPHAEL (1 483-1 520). RAPHAEL SANZIO was the son of Giovanni Santi, a painter of some repute in the ducal city of Urbino, situated among the Apennines on the borders of Tuscany and Umbria. 1 For many years both before and after the birth of Raphael the city of Urbino was one of the chief centres in Italy of intellectual and artistic activity, thanks to its highly cultured rulers, Duke Federigo II. of Montefeltro and his son Guidobaldo, who succeeded him in 1482, 2 the year before Raphael was born. The ducal 1 See Pungileoni, Elogio Storico di Ra/aello, Urbino, 1829 ; for a valuable account of Raphael's family and his early life, see also Id., Vita di Give. Santi, Urbino, 1822, and Campori, Notizie e Documents per la Vita di Oiov. Santi e di Ra/aello, Modena, 1870. , 2 See an interesting account of the court of Urbino by Delaborde, Etudes sur les B. Arts ... en Italic, Paris, 1864, vol. i. p. 145. residence of Urbino, built by Federigo II., even now one of the most magnificent palaces in Italy, was lavishly adorned with works of art of every class frescos, panel- pictures, tapestries, tarsia-work, stucco-reliefs, and sculp- ture executed for the duke by some of the chief Italian artists of his time, and contained a collection of oil-paintings by the Van Eycks and other celebrated Flemish painters. Giovanni Santi was a welcome guest at this miniature but splendid court, and the rich treasures which the palace contained, familiar to Raphael from his earliest years, were a very important item among the various influences which formed and fostered his early love for art. It may not perhaps be purely fanciful to trace Raphael's boyish admiration of the oil-paintings of Jan Van Eyck and Justus of Ghent in the miniature -like care and delicacy with which some of his earliest works, such as the Knight's Dream, were executed. Though Raphael lost his father at the age of eleven, yet to him he certainly owed a great part of that early training which enabled him to produce paintings of appa- rently mature beauty when he was scarcely twenty years of age. From his father, too, Raphael learned much of the religious sentiment and grace of motive which are specially conspicuous in his earlier paintings. The altar-piece painted by Giovanni for the church of Gradara, and a fresco, now preserved in the Santi house 3 at Urbino, are clearly prototypes of some of Raphael's most graceful paintings of the Madonna and Child. On the death of his father in 1494 young Raphael was left in the care of his stepmother (his own mother, Magia Ciarla, having died in 1491) and of his uncle, a priest called Bartolomeo. 4 First or Perugian Period. In what year Raphael was apprenticed to Perugino and how the interval before that was spent are matters of doubt. Vasari's statement that he was sent to Perugia during his father's lifetime is cer- tainly a mistake. On the whole it appears most probable that he did not enter Perugino's studio till the end of 1499, as during the four or five years before that Perugino was mostly absent from his native city. 5 As was the case with every one with whom Raphael came in contact, the Perugian master was fascinated by the charm of his manner and delighted by his precocious ability, and seems to have devoted special pains to his artistic education. The so-called Sketch Book of Raphael in the academy of Venice contains studies apparently from the cartoons of some of Perugino's Sistine frescos, possibly done as practice in drawing. This celebrated collection of thirty drawings, now framed or preserved in portfolios, bears signs of having once formed a bound book, and has been supposed to be a sketch-book filled by Raphael during his Perugian apprenticeship. Many points, however, make this tempting hypothesis very improbable ; the fact that the draw- ings were not all originally on leaves of the same size, and the miscellaneous character of the sketches varying much both in style and merit of execution seem to show that it is a collection of studies by different hands, made and bound together by some subsequent owner, and may contain but very few drawings by Raphael himself. 6 Before long Raphael appears to have been admitted to take a share in the execution of paintings by his master ; 3 The house of Giovanni Santi, where Raphael was born, still exists at Urbino in the Contrada del Monte, and, being the property of the municipality, is now safe from destruction. 4 The administration of Giovanni Santi's will occasioned many painful family disputes and even appeals to law ; see Pungileoni, EL Star, di Raffaello. 6 Crowe and Cavalcaselle (Life of Raphael, vol. i., London, 1882) adopt the notion that Raphael went to Perugia in 1 495, but the reasons with which they support this view appear insufficient. 6 See an excellent critical examination of the Sketch Book by Morelli, Italian Masters in German Galleries, translated by Mrs Richter, London, 1882 ; according to this able critic, only two draw- ings are by Raphael. See also Schmarsow, "Raphael's Skizzenbuch in Venedig," in Preussische Jahrbiicher, xlviii. pp. 122-149, Berlin, 1881, who takes the opposite view. Kahl, Das venezianische Skizzen- buch, Leipsic, 1882, follows Morelli's opinion.