Identifier: centuryillustratv43n2newy (find matches)
Title: The century illustrated monthly magazine
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors:
Subjects: American literature
Publisher: New York : Century Co.
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

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eculation would have killed the art.The fact is that Raphael had an extraordinaryand, so far as we can judge by the history ofpainting, unique power of absorbing the ideasand feelings of other men. He caught the colorof every great artist he approached, and themarvelous facility of design he had acquiredby his early training, seconded by a phenom-enal power of invention, enabled him some-times to surpass in their own way the work ofthe men he emulated. The second room of the Vatican — that ofthe Heliodorus, etc. — is designed more in ac-cordance with the artists individual feeling, andfurnishes some passages of composition whichmust remain as the highest attainment of Ra-phaels invention in this vein. Before it wasfinished Julius died, and was succeeded by LeoX., under whose pontificate Raphael becamethe arbiter of art in Rome. Michelangelo wasdriven by neglect from the pontifical court, and 1 It is well determined that his inspirer in philosophyand archaeology was Cardinal Bembo.
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ITALIAN OLD MASTERS. 171 retired to Florence, leaving Raphael alone andsupreme. The room of the Stanze was begun in 1515,and was followed by the hall of Constantineand the Loggie in a sequence of design andexecution which for its extent, even with al-lowance for the aid of his pupils, is incom-prehensible to the modern painter. During thisperiod he was introduced by stealth into theSistine Chapel, as the legend goes, and sawthe ceiling of Michelangelo, which once moremodified his art in a manner which is moreremarkable than all the previous develop-ments. The effect of this is seen in the fres-cos in the church of Sta. Maria della Pace inRome. The Cartoons give us what on thewhole seems to me the most triumphant achieve-ment of Raphael in this vein of design, and Ishould rank them as the highest examples ofwhat is generally understood as academic com-position, that art which being still pure art ap-proaches the region of artifice so closely as tobe, to certain minds, indefensible. I s

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