Great Artists, Vol 1. | Page 4

young John presenting him with a
finch, which he caresses gently. The Madonna has the drooping eyes,
the exquisitely rounded face that always charm us, and the boys are real
live children ready for a frolic. Another, called "The Madonna of the
Meadow," represents the Virgin in the foreground of a gently broken
landscape with the two children playing beside her. We must not forget,
either, as belonging to this time, the very beautiful "La Belle
Jardiniere," or the "Madonna of the Garden" which now hangs in the
Louvre, the art gallery of Paris.
Like all his great Madonnas, the Virgin and Children are of surpassing
loveliness. It is finished in such a soft, melting style that to see it in its
exquisite coloring, one could easily imagine it vanishing imperceptibly
into the blaze of some splendid sunset. While we are talking of
Raphael's color it may be interesting to call your attention to a very
remarkable fact about his paintings. He lays the color on the canvas so
thin that sometimes one can trace through it the lines of the drawing,
and yet his color is so pure and beautiful that he is considered one of
the greatest colorists of the world. The next time you see an oil painting,
notice how thick or how thin the paint is laid on, and then think of what
I have told you of Raphael's method of using color.
[Illustration: LA BELLE JARDINIERE. Raphael.]
Now while Raphael was painting these drooping-eyed, mild-faced
Madonnas and learning great lessons from the masters of Florence, a
wonderful honor came to him. He was called to Rome by the Pope and
given some of the apartments of the Vatican to decorate in any way he
wished.

The Pope at this time was Julius II. and he was a very interesting man.
He was a warrior and had spent many years fighting to gain lands and
cities for the Church. When peace returned he was still anxious to do
honor to the Church and so, wherever he heard of a great architect,
painter, or sculptor, he at once invited him to Rome to do beautiful
work for the Church. Already he had set Michael Angelo to work on a
grand tomb for him. Bramante, a relative of Raphael's, was working
hard to make St. Peter's the most wonderful Church in all the world.
Now the young Raphael was to beautify still further the buildings
belonging to the church.
Julius did not pretend to be an artist or a scholar, and yet by his
patronage he greatly encouraged art and literature. The story is told that
when Angelo was making a statue of the Pope for the town of Bologna,
the artist asked Julius if he should place a book in the statue's extended
left hand, and the Pope retorted, almost in anger, "What book? Rather a
sword--I am no reader!"
In earlier years Florence had been a glorious sight to our artist and now
in 1508, standing in the "Eternal City," he was more awed than when
first he beheld the city of the Arno. Here the court of Julius, gorgeous
and powerful, together with the works of art, like St. Peter's, in process
of construction, were but a part of the wonders to be seen. In addition,
the remains of ancient Rome were scattered all about--here a row of
columns, the only remains of a grand temple, there a broken statue of
some god or goddess, long lost to sight, and all the earth about so filled
with these treasures that one had only to dig to find some hidden work
of art. The Roman people, too, were awake to the fact that they were
not only living out a marvelous present, but that they were likewise, in
their every day life, walking ever in the presence of a still more
wonderful past. I wish, while you are thinking about this, that you
would get a picture of the Roman Forum and notice its groups of
columns, its triumphal arches, its ruined walls. You will then certainly
appreciate more fully what Raphael felt as he went about this city of
historic ruins.
[Illustration: MADONNA OF THE FISH. Raphael.]

The Pope received the young artist cordially and at once gave him the
vast commission of painting in fresco three large rooms, or stanze, of
the Vatican. In addition, he was to decorate the gallery, or corridor,
called the loggia, leading to these apartments from the stairway. With
the painting of these walls Raphael and his pupils were more or less
busy during the remainder of the artist's short life. A great many
religious and historic subjects were used, besides some invented by
Raphael himself, as when he represented Poetry by Mount Parnassus
inhabited by all the great poets past