Raphael: His Life and Works

PREFACE.

THE life of Raphael has been the subject of countless biographies and essays in which admiration and praise were justly lavished on the greatest painter of any age. From the days of Rumohr to those of Passavant and Waagen, the master's works were subjected to the minutest investigation; and drawings, pictures, or frescos were examined, measured, and commented on with unwearying patience and industry. Yet the outcome has not been commensurate with the labour expended; and we are still without a life of Raphael which deals exhaustively with his relations to the art and artists of his own or previous centuries. Some have studied pictures to discover and point out the influence of the antique or contemporary craftsmen in Italy. Others have looked at drawings to note their connection with altar-pieces or frescos; Passavant alone devoted his life to a catalogue of all Raphael's works. His

followers, amongst whom we shall note Springer and Grimm as pre-eminent, endeavoured to sift the errors of their predecessors, and, in numerous instances they succeeded in elucidating disputed points in Raphael's career. But no one, as yet, has convincingly traced the progress of the artist. Critics are divided into parties who fight, not without acrimony, over matters which remain obscure; and it is characteristic that even the intercourse of Raphael with Perugino has been left in considerable doubt.

The authors of these pages do not pretend to have solved the problems which vainly exercised the skill of so many inquirers; yet they hope to have done something to shed new light on Raphael's career. In the volume which they now offer to the public, they have shown how they ventured to explore and attempted to illustrate the period of Raphael's youth, which had hitherto been comparatively neglected. They have tried to prove how he was taught under his father and Perugino; and they have looked at every drawing as well as at every picture to trace the road which led him deviously to fame; they point out, it may be not unerringly, where he copied the antique, where his professional rivals or precursors; how he digested and assimilated after learning the lessons of all the masters of his country. Little or

nothing, indeed, has been added to the documentary evidence which was stored since the days of Vasari ; but all the materials in existence have been used, and neither time nor travel has been spared to study personally every example in whatever part of the world it was deposited.

The sources from which they quote, the Authors have invariably acknowledged. It is only necessary to add that where no express statement to the contrary has been made they have used Lemonnier's edition of "Vasari."

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Contemporary critics.-Origin of the Santi.-Frederick of Urbino.-

Frederick as a patron of Art.-Giovanni Santi.-Guidubaldo of

Montefeltro.-Raphael's infancy.-Giovanni Santi dies.-Santi and

Raphael.-Raphael an orphan.-Perugino and Raphael.-Raphael's

first master.-Perugino Raphaelesque.-Raphael Peruginesque.-

Signorelli.-Timoteo Viti.

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CHAPTER II.

Perugian revolutions.-Art revival at Perugia.-Raphael's sketch-book.

-Pinturicchio as a draughtsman.-Perugino's sketches.-Raphael