Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/35

Rh here Raphael has depicted the portrait of the Cardinal di San Giorgio, with a vast number of other personages, also from the life. The break caused by the window was turned to account by the master, who having there represented an ascent in the form of a flight of stairs, thus makes the paintings on each side into one sole picture, nay, he has even made it appear that if this opening caused by the window had not been there, the scene could not have been so well arranged. It may indeed with truth be said of Raphael here, as elsewhere, that as respects invention and the graces of composition, whatever the story may be, no artist has ever shown more skill, more readiness of resource, or a more admirable judgment than himself; a fact of which he has given further proof in this same place, where in the opposite picture he has represented San Pietro thrown into a prison by Herod, and guarded by soldiers. The architectural details here depicted and the simple delineation of the prison, are treated with so much ingenuity that the works of other artists, when compared with those of Raphael, seem to exhibit as much of confusion as do that master’s of grace and beauty. Raphael constantly endeavoured to represent the circumstances which he depicted as they are described or written, and to assemble only the most appropriate and characteristic objects in his works, as for example in the picture before us, where he reveals to us the wretchedness of the prison. Bound with chains, that aged man is seen extended between two soldiers; the deep and heavy sleep of the guards is rendered fully manifest, as the resplendent light proceeding from the Angel illumines the darkness of night, and causes the most minute particulars of the prison to be clearly discerned: the arms of the sleepers shine so brilliantly, that their burnished lustre seems rather to belong to things real and palpable, than to the merely painted surface of a picture.

No less remarkable are the art and ingenuity displayed in another part of the same picture; that namely where, freed from his chains, the Apostle walks forth from his prison,