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If criticism before such admirable examples of so excellent a master be permissible, it may be questioned whether the figures are not too crowded, whether the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by rhythmic lines. Yet the concords of yellow and orange with blue in the 'Sposalizio, and the blendings of dull violet and red in the 'Disputa, make up for much of stiffness.
Fabio Calvi may, indeed, have supplied him with serviceable notes on Greek philosophy. But to Raphael alone belongs the triumph of having personified the dry elements of learning in appropriate living forms. The same is true of the "Parnassus," and, in a less degree, of the "Disputa." To the physiognomist these frescoes will always be invaluable.
Here, as in the Chapel of S. Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the greatest colourist among frescanti. In the 'Sposalizio' the female heads are singularly noble and idyllically graceful. Some of the young men too have Luini's special grace and abundance of golden hair. In the 'Disputa' the gravity and dignity of old men are above all things striking.
It invites comparison rather with the similar subjects painted by Fra Angelico than with the Disputa of Raphael, to which German critics compare it; however, it possesses as little of Angelico's sweet blissfulness as the Dominican painter possessed of Duerer's accuracy of hand and searching intensity of visual realisation.
Now and then, as in the Disputa , which marks the very zenith of his art, he is almost a great painter, but the Madonna with six Saints , painted in 1524, is already full of repetitions, the kneeling figures in the foreground, for instance, that we find again in the Deposition painted in the same year.
The Phidian "Theseus" represents the Greek school pursuing truth of form; the "Disputa" of Raphael, the Florentine school pursuing truth of mental expression; the "Marriage in Cana," the Venetian school pursuing truth of colour and light. But do not suppose that the law which I am stating to you the great law of art-life can only be seen in these, the most powerful of all art schools.
Raphael. The "Disputa." The hieratic majesty of the "Disputa" was here unnecessary, but a tranquil and spacious dignity was to be attained, and it is attained through the use of vertical and horizontal lines the lines of stability and repose, while the bounding curve is echoed again and again in the diminishing arches of the imagined vaulting.
Yet Everett Millais is this year of the exact age at which Raphael painted the "Disputa," his greatest work; Rossetti and Hunt are both of them older still nor is there one member of the body so young as Giotto, when he was chosen from among the painters of Italy to decorate the Vatican. But Italy, in her great period, knew her great men, and did not "despise their youth."
The Disputa, di S. Agostino is another masterpiece, showing as much power as the last-named work displays of softness. It was painted at the order of the Eremite monks of San Gallo for their church of San Jacopo tra Fossi, where it was injured by a flood in 1557, and removed later to the Hall of Saturn in the Pitti Palace.
This is the first painting done by Raphael in the Vatican, and it is all his own work, both design and execution. "Here on this side," pointing at a large fresco which covered the entire wall, "is La Disputa, or Theology. Above, on the ceiling, you see a symbolic figure representing Religion, with the Bible in one hand and pointing down at the great picture with the other.
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