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Updated: May 5, 2025
It is rather tawny in color, as if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood had asserted itself from below. It is a charming picture, with all the great Roman's inevitable perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible that critics, M. Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank of Raphael's Virgins in Glory.
It is only by hurrying through a list like this that we can appreciate the many-sided perfection of Raphael's accomplishment. How, lastly, was it possible that this young painter should have found the time to superintend the building of S. Peter's, and to form a plan for excavating Rome in its twelve ancient regions?
Rembrandt, Gerard Dow & his pupils Mieris and Metsu please me more than any other artists. In the whole Collection they have but one of Salvator's, but that one, I think, is preferable to all Raphael's. I have not yet seen statues enough to be judge of their beauties. The Apollo of Belvidere & the celebrated Laocoon lose, therefore, much of their Excellence when seen by me.
It is the holiest of all Raphael's Madonnas, with a great reserve in the expression, a sense of being apart, and yet with the utmost tenderness and sweetness; although she drops her eyelids before her like a veil, as it were, and has a primness of eternal virginity about the mouth. It is one of Raphael's earlier works, when he mixed more religious sentiment with his paint than afterwards.
In truth, the frescos, excepting a few figures, never had the real touch of Raphael's own hand upon them, having been merely designed by him, and finished by his scholars, or by other artists. The halls themselves are specimens of antique magnificence, paved with elaborate mosaics; and wherever there is any wood-work, it is richly carved with foliage and figures.
So while the captain was discussing pirates with the dey, Sir Joshua stopped with the Governor of Minorca and painted many of the people of that locality. Thence on to Rome! Strange to say, Raphael's pictures disappointed the English artist, and he said so; but Michael Angelo was to Reynolds the most wonderful of painters, and he said that his pictures influenced him all the rest of his life.
One of Raphael's friends said to him, in looking upon particular figures in his groups, "You have transmitted to posterity your own likeness." "See you nothing beyond that?" replied the artist. "I see," said the critic, "the deep-blue eye, and the long, fair hair parted on the forehead." "Observe," said Raphael, "the feminine softness of expression, the beautiful harmony of thought and feeling.
But Raphael's cartoons went not only to Brussels, but elsewhere, and somehow the borders got left behind; and thus we see his celebrated suite of Acts of the Apostles with a different entourage in the Madrid set from what it bears in Rome. There is another matter, and this has to do with commerce more than art.
I also saw at Bologna the Englishman Aston with Madame Slopitz, sister of the Charming Cailimena. Madame Slopitz was much handsomer than her sister. She had presented Aston with two babes as beautiful as Raphael's cherubs. I spoke of her sister to her, and from the way in which I sang her praises she guessed that I had loved her.
"It was said that Francia never painted again, so overcome was he by the surpassing loveliness of Raphael's picture, and that he died from the effect of this feeling, but," she went on impetuously, "I do not believe it; for see there!" pointing to Francia's Madonna with Sts.
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