t popular picture in Florence, if not the whole world, Raphael's
"Madonna della Sedia," that beautiful rich scene of maternal tenderness
and infantine peace. Personally I do not find myself often under
Raphael's spell; but here he conquers. The Madonna again is without
enough expression, but her arms are right, and the Child is right,
and the colour is so rich, almost Venetian in that odd way in which
Raphael now and then could suggest Venice.

It is interesting to compare Raphael's two famous Madonnas in this
room: this one belonging to his Roman period and the other, opposite
it, to Florence, with the differences so marked. For by the time he
painted this he knew more of life and human affection. This picture,
I suppose, might be called the consummation of Renaissance painting in
fullest bloom: the latest triumph of that impulse. I do not say it is
the best; but it may be called a crown on the whole movement both in
subject and treatment. Think of the gulf between the Cimabue Madonna
and the Giotto Madonna, side by side, which we saw in the Accademia,
and this. With so many vivid sympathies Giotto must have wanted with
all his soul to make the mother motherly and the child childlike; but
the time was not yet; his hand was neither free nor fit. Between Giotto
and Raphael had to come many things before such treatment as this was
possible; most of all, I think, Luca della Robbia had to come between,
for he was the most valuable reconciler of God and man of them all. He
was the first to bring a tender humanity into the Church, the first
to know that a mother's fingers, holding a baby, sink into its soft
little body. Without Luca I doubt if the "Madonna della Sedia" could
be the idyll of protective solicitude and loving pride that it is.

The Sala di Giove brings us to Venetian painting indeed, and glorious
painting too, for next the door is Titian's "Bella," No. 18, the lady
in the peacock-blue dress with purple sleeves, all richly embroidered
in gold, whom to see once is to remember for ever. On the other side of
the door is Andrea's brilliant "S. John the Baptist as a Boy," No. 272,
and then the noblest Fra Bartolommeo here, a Deposition, No. 64, not
good in colour, but superbly drawn and pitiful. In this room also is
the monk's great spirited figure of S. Marco, for the convent of that
name. Between them is a Tintoretto, No. 131, Vincenzo Zeino, one of his
ruddy old men, with a glimpse of Venice, under an angry sky, th