Raphael - Pages of the Book of Life at Twenty | Page 3

sport, because in his boyhood he much
resembled a youthful portrait of Raphael, which may be seen in the
Barberini gallery at Rome, at the Pitti palace in Florence, and at the

Museum of the Louvre. We had given him the name, too, because the
distinctive feature of this youth's character was his lively sense of the
beautiful in Nature and Art,--a sense so keen, that his mind was, so to
speak, merely the shadowing forth of the ideal or material beauty
scattered through-out the works of God and man. This feeling was the
result of his exquisite and almost morbid sensibility,--morbid, at least,
until time had somewhat blunted it. We would sometimes, in allusion
to those who, from their ardent longings to revisit their country, are
called home-sick, say that he was heaven-sick, and he would smile, and
say that we were right.
This love of the beautiful made him unhappy; in another situation it
might have rendered him illustrious. Had he held a pencil he would
have painted the Virgin of Foligno; as a sculptor, he would have
chiselled the Psyche of Canova; had he known the language in which
sounds are written, he would have noted the aerial lament of the sea
breeze sighing among the fibres of Italian pines, or the breathing of a
sleeping girl who dreams of one she will not name; had he been a poet,
he would have written the stanzas of Tasso's "Erminia," the moonlight
talk of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," or Byron's portrait of Haidee.
He loved the good as well as the beautiful, but he loved not virtue for
its holiness, he loved it for its beauty. He would have been aspiring in
imagination, although he was not ambitious by character. Had he lived
in those ancient republics where men attained their full development
through liberty, as the free, unfettered body develops itself in pure air
and open sunshine, he would have aspired to every summit like Cæsar,
he would have spoken as Demosthenes, and would have died as Cato.
But his inglorious and obscure destiny confined him, against his will, in
speculative inaction,--he had wings to spread, and no surrounding air to
bear them up. He died young, straining his gaze into the future, and
ardently surveying the space over which he was never to travel.
Every one knows the youthful portrait of Raphael to which I have
alluded. It represents a youth of sixteen, whose face is somewhat paled
by the rays of a Roman sun, but on whose cheek still blooms the soft
down of childhood. A glancing ray of light seems to play on the velvet
of the cheek. He leans his elbow on a table; the arm is bent upwards to
support the head, which rests on the palm of the hand, and the
admirably modelled fingers are lightly imprinted on the cheek and chin;

the delicate mouth is thoughtful and melancholy; the nose is slender at
its rise, and slightly tinged with blue, as though the azure veins shone
through the fair transparency of the skin; the eyes are of that dark
heavenly hue which the Apennines wear at the approach of dawn, and
they gaze earnestly forward, but are slightly raised to heaven, as though
they ever looked higher than Nature,--a liquid lustre illuminates their
inmost depths, like rays dissolved in dew or tears. On the scarcely
arched brow, beneath the delicate skin, we trace the muscles, those
responsive chords of the instrument of thought; the temples seem to
throb with reflection; the ear appears to listen; the dark hair, unskilfully
cut by a sister or some young companion of the studio, casts a shadow
upon the hand and cheek; and a small cap of black velvet, placed on the
crown of the head, shades the brow. One cannot pass before this
portrait without musing sadly, one knows not why. It represents the
revery of youthful genius pausing on the threshold of its destiny. What
will be the fate of that soul standing at the portal of life?
Now, in idea, add six years to the age of that dreaming boy; suppose
the features bolder, the complexion more bronzed; place a few furrows
on the brow, slightly dim the look, sadden the lips, give height to the
figure, and throw out the muscles in bolder relief; let the Italian
costume of the days of Leo X. be exchanged for the sombre and plain
uniform of a youth bred in the simplicity of rural life, who seeks no
elegance in dress,--and, if the pensive and languid attitude be retained,
you will have the striking likeness of our "Raphael" at the age of
twenty-two.
He was of a poor, though ancient family, from the mountainous
province of Forez, and his father, whose sole dignity was that