CHAPTER XXII

WHEREIN WE WALK WITH RAPHAEL, THE RADIANT CHILD OF FORTUNE AND APOSTLE OF GRACE

THERE lived, side by side, and wrought their art in those early fifteen-hundreds, Raphael and Michelangelo, with Andrea del Sarto for splendid company ; and rounded off the significance of the Renaissance in Tuscany in its supreme flight of achievement.

Raphael created little, initiated little, but he rather gathered into his single personality the whole and varied activities of the men who had gone before ; and forthwith selected from all such their supreme qualities, and wrought them into a wondrous whole, as though in him were to be gathered their varied design that it might be given forth in a glorious flowering.

Raphael and Michelangelo changed the scene of the triumphs of the Renaissance from Florence to Rome ; but Florentine and Umbrian it was, nevertheless.

To understand the significance of Raphael and his art, it is necessary to glance back awhile.

The artistic school of Venice had thrown out many offshoots throughout the north of Italy ; and one of her colonies, Bologna, had bred a goldsmith-painter of distinction, his name FRANCIA-born in the mid-fourteen-hundreds (1450)-who had founded his artistry upon the practice of Giovanni Bellini. In Francia's workshop, first as pupil, then as foreman, was a young Umbrian from Urbino, one TIMOTEO VITI-and out of this partnership was to be born a strange destiny.

XXIV
RAPHAEL
1483 - 1520
UMBRIAN SCHOOL
"LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE"
(LOUVRE)
The Virgin is seated in a flowery meadow. She looks down to the left at the Infant Jesus, who leans against her knee and draws her attention to the little St. John the Baptist who kneels to the right, his reed cross in his right hand.
The signature seems to be:-"VRB. RAPHAELLO MDVII." Painted in oil on panel. 3 ft. 8 in. x 2 ft. 7 1/2 in. (1.22 x 0.80).