having no other, as indeed he never had more,[1] should herself be the nurse of the child. Giovanni further desired that in its tender years, the boy should rather be brought up to the habits of his own family, and beneath his paternal roof, than be sent where he must acquire habits and manners less refined, and modes of thought less commendable, in the houses of the peasantry, or other untaught persons.[2] •As the child became older Giovanni began to instruct him in the first principles of painting, perceiving that he was much inclined to that art and finding him to be endowed with a most admirable genius; few years had passed therefore before Raphael, though still but a child, became a valuable assistant to his father in the numerous works which the latter executed in the State of Urbino.[3]
At length this good and affectionate parent, knowing that his son would acquire but little of his art from himself, resolved to place him with Pietro Perugino,[4] who, according to what Giovanni had been told, was then considered to hold the first place among the painters of the time. Wherefore, proceeding to Perugia for that purpose, and finding Pietro to be absent from the city, he occupied himself, to the end that he might await the return of the master with the less inconvenience in the execution of certain works for the church of San
- ↑ When Raphael was born, Giovanni Santo had already one son, but this child died in 1485. He had afterwards one, or as some authors say, two daughters.
- ↑ We have numerous testimonies to the fact that Giovanni was a man of refined habits and highly cultivated mind. See among other writers, Pungileoni, Elogio Storico di Giovanni Santi Pittore e Poeta, &c. Urbino, 1822.
- ↑ Since Giovanni died in 1594, when Raphael was but eleven years old, the latter could not have assisted his father in any but the most unimportant labours of their vocation, unless indeed we are to suppose in him an instance of that precocity of genius which is exemplified in Mozart and some few others, whose powers have been developed in their earlier youth, but who have for the most part, become exhausted before the attainment of more than half the common age of man.— Schorn.
- ↑ The best authorities affirm that Raphael received his first instructions from Luca Signorelli and Timoteo Viti, who were at that time in Urbino; they add that he was placed with Perugino by the care of his uncle Simone Ciarla, and that of his guardian, Don Bartolommeo.
death; by others she is affirmed, on the contrary, to have been at all times among his best friends.— See Passavant, ut supra. See also Longhena, Istoria, &c., di Raffaello Sanzio del Sig. Quatrémère de Quincy, Milan, 1829.
