een in the regular course of
business--especially as the pewter plates had been thrown into the
furnace, a thing never done before.

GIORGIO VASARI

Born in Arrezo, Italy, in 1511, died in Florence in 1574;
architect and painter as well as writer; many of his
pictures produced in Florence and Rome; built a portion of
the Uffizi Palace; only known in our day for his "Lives of
Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors," published in
1550.

OF RAPHAEL AND HIS EARLY DEATH[33]

The large and liberal hand wherewith heaven is sometimes pleased to
accumulate the infinite riches of its treasures on the head of one
sole favorite--showering on him all those rare gifts and graces which
are more commonly distributed among a larger number of individuals,
and accorded at long intervals of time only--has been clearly
exemplified in the well-known instance of Raphael Sanzio of Urbino.

[Footnote 33: From "The Lives of the Most Famous Painters, Sculptors
and Architects," as translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster. An earlier
translation is the one by William Aglionby (1719).]

No less excellent than graceful, he was endowed by nature with all
that modesty and goodness which may occasionally be perceived in those
few favored persons who enhance the gracious sweetness of a
disposition more than usually gentle, by the fair ornament of a
winning amenity, always ready to conciliate and constantly giving
evidence of the most refined consideration for all persons, and under
every circumstance. The world received the gift of this artist from
the hand of Nature, when, vanquished by Art in the person of
Michelangelo, she deigned to be subjugated in that of Raphael, not by
art only but by goodness also. And of a truth, since the greater
number of artists had up to that period derived from nature a certain
rudeness and eccentricity, which not only rendered them uncouth and
fantastic, but often caused the shadows and darkness of vice to be
more conspicuous in their lives than the light and splendor of those
virtues by which man is rendered immortal--so was there good cause
wherefore she should, on the contrary make all the rarest qualities of
the heart to shine resplendently in her Raphael; perfecting them by so
much diffidence, grace, application to study, and excellence of life,
that these alone would have sufficed to veil or neutralize every
fault, however important, and to efface all defects, howev