I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some surprising combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like spontoons and standards of the militia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of schoolboys. I was to see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at last to Rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple and true. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.

EMERSON.

RAPHAEL

I

As we wander through the Dresden Art Gallery, one of the finest in the world, we are drawn to a room consecrated to a single picture. Other rooms may have a score, a hundred, beautiful objects of art; this room has but one. There in the hush and quiet hangs the most famous "madonna" of the most popular of the world's great masters. Commenting upon the mystic impressiveness of this work of the Prince of Painters Frances Willard said: "There is in Europe a single revelation of art which has power to silence the chatter even of fashion's devotees, and this is Raphael's Sistine Madonna.' I have been in its seraphic presence for hours at a time, but never heard a vocal comment." Yet concerning this painting Vasari has but three or four lines of comment,-"For the Black Friars of San Sisto in Piacenza, Raphael painted a picture, intended to form the altar-piece for the high altar of their church; the subject of this work is the Virgin with St. Sixtus and Santa Barbara, a truly admirable production."

"A truly admirable production" seems scant praise, and four lines seem scant space, for a picture that is now considered one of the world's greatest masterpieces, outranking in popularity all the famous madonnas of all the famous masters.

For many years this painting was considered one of Raphael's last works, belonging to the time of the “Transfiguration," though having better color than the latter. It is now believed to have been painted in 1515. "How the northern city of Piacenza," write the editors of the Blashfield and Hopkins edition of Vasari, "ever was fortunate enough to obtain such a picture from Raphael at his busiest time is a mystery. Perhaps it was an outcome of that visit to Bologna, if the visit ever took place; perhaps the Cardinal of San Sisto was mediator for the monks of Piacenza. He knew Raphael well, had been painted in the fresco of the Decretals, was one of the party in the famous papal progress to Bologna, and, if an advocate with Raphael, would have been a powerful one. The picture was upon canvas, and it has been said upon uncertain evidence that it was so painted in order that it might be used as banner on night festivals."

Somewhere I have read that Charles Wesley wrote 6,000 hymns; but from these 6,000 but one hymn has assurance of immortality, Jesus, Lover of my Soul. A greater poet than Wesley, Wordsworth, wrote, perhaps, thousands of sonnets, for he

has published over 450; and the world will forget all but two or three. La Farge burned many of his drawings, and yet left between 50,000 and 60,000, and he will be fortunate if one of his paintings be remembered four centuries hence. Genius, like Nature, is prodigal. Raphael has painted scores of madonnas, and doubtless sketched hundreds that he never painted, and out of the many stand two, the "Madonna della Sedia," symbolizing the human aspect of motherhood, and the "Sistine Madonna," symbolizing the divine mystery of motherhood and the sacred loveliness of childhood.

It is curious what tricks fate plays us. A capacity for taking infinite pains does not always spell perfection. It is seldom that a man's most laborious effort brings him the greatest rewards. A Carlyle spends years in writing his Oliver Cromwell, but the world reads his Sartor Resartus instead, a work lightly dashed off in six months. Raphael works for popes and princes, elaborately decorates the Vatican and embellishes cathedrals, but the world looks at his "Sistine Madonna," to which Vasari devotes but four lines of comment. How many of the common lot, to which most of us belong, can recall the figures of the Camera della Segnatura? How many of us can ever forget the "Sistine Madonna"? La Farge found the Madonnas of Raphael even in the huts of Cannibal Land. But Raphael must have devoted a day to

the Camera della Segnatura for every hour he devoted to his greatest madonna.

In form the "Sistine Madonna" suggests a pyramid, made up of a number of pyramids. "The three principal figures form the upper triangle, and the body of each person repeats the figure,— that is, the head rises from the shoulder in such a way that the lines inclosing them produce a triangle. Further, in each face, the line formed by the eyes is connected by two imaginary lines meeting at the mouth."

But to those of us who are not artists the appeal is neither through the sense of proportion, although that must have its unconscious influence, nor through the coloring, for Raphael is not a supreme colorist; but the decided appeal is through the sweet innocence and beauty of the cherubs, the devotion of St. Barbara, the expectant adoration and humility of the Pope, the noble beauty of the mother, sad with an unutterable sadness, as though she were hearing the "still, sad music of humanity," and the tender wistfulness of the babe who seems to have in the innocence of childhood a premonition of the cross and crown of thorns.

II

It is generally believed that Raphael was born on April 6, 1483, for his intimate friend, Bembo, tells us, in the inscription written for Raphael's tomb,