ine tenderness, motherhood at
its holiest, gazes calmly from the face of the Sistine Madonna, "whose
eyes are deeper than the depths of waters stilled at even." The simple
mind, unsophisticated by lore of the pre-Raphaelite school, will worship
a Raphael when he will but revel in a Titian. Strangely touched by the
magic of this passionate lover both of the church and of mortal women,
the average man of that day, or of this, found, and will find, glad
tidings for his heart in the very color of Mary's robe. "Whoever would
know how Christ transfigured and made divine should be painted, must
look," says Vasari, on Raphael's canvases.

The church and the papacy found an ally in Raphael, {680} whose pencil
illustrated so many triumphs of the popes and so many mysteries of
religion. In his Disputa (so-called) he made the secret of
transubstantiation visible. In his great cartoon of Leo I turning back
Attila he gave new power to the arm of Leo X. His Parnassus and School
of Athens seemed to make philosophy easy for the people. Indeed, it is
from them that he has reaped his rich reward, for while the Pharisees of
art pick flaws in him, point out what they find of shallowness and of
insincerity, the people love him more than any other artist has been
loved. It is for them that he worked, and on every labor one might read
as it were his motto, "I will not offend even one of these little ones."

If Raphael's art was safe in his own hands there can be little doubt that
it hastened the decadence of painting [Sidenote: Decadence of religious
art] in the hands of his followers. His favorite pupil, Giulio Romano,
caught every trick of the master and, like the devil citing Scripture,
painted pictures to delight the eye so licentious that they cannot now be
exhibited. Andrea del Sarto sentimentalized the Virgin, turning
tenderness to bathos. Correggio, the most gifted of them all, could do
nothing so well as depict sensual love. His pictures are hymns to Venus,
and his women, saints and sinners alike, are houris of an erotic
paradise. Has the ecstasy of amorous passion amounting almost to
mystical transport ever been better suggested than in the marvellous
light and shade of his Jupiter and Io? These and many other contemporary
artists had on their lips but one song, a paean in praise of life, the
pomps and glories of this goodly world and the delights and beauties of
the body.

But to all men, save those loved by the gods