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The Saint John the Baptist of the Tribuna, and Saint Luke painting the Virgin's portrait in the Accademia at Rome, have not the charm of the Portrait of Leo X., and of the Virgin at Dresden. And yet they are all of equal merit. Nay, more. The Stanze, the Transfiguration, the panels, and the three easel pictures in the Vatican are in the highest degree perfect and sublime.
Peter's, which is not a nucleus of the city, like the Duomo of Florence, but a crown more majestic and imposing as the spectator is farther removed. I had come to this balcony and its realm of sunny silence through the proper palace of the "Apollo" and the "Laocoon" and Raphael's "Transfiguration" and "Stanze."
For the large frescoes of Podesti, which occupy a conspicuous place in the great hall of the Vatican, preceding the stanze of Raphael, and depict the persons and incidents connected with the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, are worthless as works of art, and present a melancholy contrast to the works of the immortal genius in the adjoining halls, who wrought under the inspiration of a nobler faith.
Ah! how often in my sleep do I behold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof never appear to me awake, but so soon as I awake even the remembrance of them leaveth me!" Why was he not sent to Rome to see the ceiling of the Sistina and Raphael's Stanze? Perchance it was these that he saw in his dreams?
Vasari, well pleased no doubt to renew his acquaintance with the acknowledged head of the contemporary Venetian painters, acted as his cicerone in the visits to the antiquities of Rome, to the statues and art-treasures of the Vatican, while Titian's fellow-citizen Sebastiano del Piombo was in his company when he studied the Stanze of Raphael.
Much less evident is this tendency in Raphael's greatest works, the Stanze and the Cartoons, in which true dramatic significance and the sovereign beauties of exalted style generally go hand in hand. The Transfiguration itself is, however, the most crying example of the reversal of the natural order in the inception of a great work.
But all are inwardly disturbed, or puzzled, or profoundly interested, and when they go away this is the great picture which, of all they have seen, they remember with the most clearness. And as Michelangelo set his great mark upon the Sixtine, so Raphael took the Stanze and the Loggie for himself and some of the halls of the picture-galleries too.
This Jacopo was a famous violin-player of his day, who had settled at the Moro's court, and who after Lodovico's fall left Milan for Rome, where he became the friend of Raphael and Castiglione, and is said to have served as model for the laurel-crowned Apollo of the Parnassus, in the Vatican Stanze.
Here, again, the glories of Italy and its art failed not to call forth eloquent remarks from Mary's pen; and her views, though at times somewhat contradictory, are always well expressed. She, at least, had a mind to appreciate the wonders of the Stanze, and to feel that genius and intellect are not out of their province in art.
Nowhere do Bembo, Aldus, or the Strozzi speak of her as a poet, nor are there any verses by her in existence. It is not certain that even the Spanish canzoni which are found in some of her letters to Bembo were composed by her. The letter, with the inscription "A Messer Carlo Canale," is printed in the edition of Milan, 1808. Angelo Poliziano, Le Stanze e l'Orfeo ed altre poesie.
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