Thus his manner, was afterwards seen perfected in the Sybils and Prophets of the work, executed as we have said, for the Church of Santa Maria della Pace, and in the conduct of which he was greatly assisted by the circumstance of his having seen the work of Michelangelo in the Chapel of the Pope.[1] Nay, had Raphael remained constant to the manner as there seen, had he not endeavoured to enlarge and vary it, for the purpose of showing that he understood the nude form as well as Michael Angelo, he would not have lost any portion of the good name he had acquired; but the nude figures in that apartment of the Torre Borgia, wherein is depicted the Conflagration of the Borgo Nuovo, although certainly good, are not by any means all excellent, or perfect in every part.[2] In like manner, those painted by this master on the ceiling of Agostino Chigi’s Palace in the Trastevere, are not altogether satisfactory, since they want that grace and softness which were peculiar to Raphael; but the cause of this was, in great part, his having suffered them to be painted after his designs by other artists,[3] an error, which judicious as he was, he soon became aware of, and resolved to execute the picture of the Transfiguration in San Pietro-a -Montorio, entirely with his own hand, and without any assistance from others. In this work, therefore, will be found, all those qualities which, as we have said, a good picture demands, and should exhibit: nay, had Raphael not used in this picture, almost as it were from caprice, the lamp black, or printer’s black, which, as we have more than once
- ↑ See ante, page 23.
- ↑ An opinion which may have been formed by Vasari, from the fact of his having regarded art from a false point of view,” remarks an Italian annotator. “No one denies, that in drawing the nude figure, Michael Angelo attained to the ne plus ultra. But what Raphael had in mind was the ne quid nimis; nor did he forget the further warning, sunt cerii denique fines, &c.; there were consequently limits which he did not desire to pass.”
- ↑ He is then not to be reproved for their defects of execution.— Schorn, and others.
had it consisted in the mere imitation and mingling of different manners. That he accepted the good wherever he found it, is indeed most true, nor did he fail to profit hy whatever progress was made in art, but his guide at every step, and the cause of his greatness, was the ever ready eye of this master for nature, and his ceaseless study of her beauties, as seen from the point of view presented by his own artistic idea and feeling.
