Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/58

50 look like a mere texture woven in the loom, but like paintings executed with the pencil. This work cost 70,000 crowns, and is still preserved in the Papal chapel.

For the Cardinal Colonna, Raphael painted a San Giovanni on canvas, which was an admirable work and greatly prized for its beauty by the cardinal, but the latter being attacked by a dangerous illness, and having been cured of his infirmity by the physician Messer Jacopo da Carpi, the latter desired to be presented with the picture of Raphael as his reward; the cardinal, therefore, seeing his great wish for the same, and believing himself to be under infinite obligation to his physician, deprived himself of the work, and gave it to Messer Jacopo. It is now at Florence in the possession of Francesco Benintendi.

Raphael also painted a picture for the Cardinal and Yicechancellor Giulio de’ Medici, a Transfiguration namely, which was destined to be sent into France. This he executed with his own hand, and labouring at it continually, he brought it to the highest perfection, depicting the Saviour transfigured on Mount Tabor, with eleven of the disciples awaiting him at the foot of the Mount. To these is meanwhile brought a youth possessed of a spirit, who is also awaiting the descent of Christ, by whom he is to be liberated from the demon. The possessed youth is shown in a distorted attitude stretching forth his limbs, crying, rolling his eyes, and exhibiting in every movement the suffering he endures; the flesh, the veins, the pulses, are all seen to be contaminated by the