executed in
marble--under the title of a Hebrew prophet in a Christian
sanctuary. The fact is no less significant than strange. During the
early centuries of Christianity, as is amply proved by the
sarcophagi in the Lateran Museum, Jonah symbolised self-sacrifice
and immortality. He was a type of Christ, an emblem of the
Christian's hope beyond the grave. During those same centuries
Antinous represented the same ideas, however inadequately, however
dimly, for the unlettered laity of Paganism. It could scarcely have
been by accident, or by mere admiration for the features of
Antinous, that Raphael, in his marble, blent the Christian and the
Pagan traditions. To unify and to transcend the double views of
Christianity and Paganism in a work of pure art was Raphael's
instinctive, if not his conscious, aim. Nor is there a more striking
instance of this purpose than the youthful Jonah with the head of
Hadrian's favourite. Leonardo's Dionysus-John-the-Baptist seems but
a careless _jeu d'esprit_ compared with this profound and studied
symbol of renascent humanism. Thus to regard the Jonah-Antinous of
the Cappella Chigi as a type of immortality and self-devotion,
fusing Christian and Graeco-Roman symbolism in one work of modern
art, is the most natural interpretation; but it would not be
impossible to trace in it a metaphor of the resurgent Pagan spirit
also--as though, leaving Jonah and his Biblical associations in the
background, the artist had determined that from the mouth of the
monstrous grave should issue not a bearded prophet, but the
victorious youth who had captivated with his beauty and his heroism
the sunset age of the classic world. At any rate, whatever may have
been Raphael's intention, the legend of Antinous, that last creation
of antique mythology, shines upon us in this marble, just as the
tale of Hero and Leander, that last blossom of antique literature,
flowers afresh in the verses of our Marlowe. It would appear as
though the Renaissance poets, hastening to meet the classic world
with arms of welcome, had embraced its latest saints, as nearest to
them, in the rapture of their first enthusiasm.

Over all these questions, over all that concerns Antinous, there
rests a cloud of darkness and impenetrable doubt. To pierce that
cloud is now impossible. The utmost we can do is to indulge our
fancy in dreams of greater or less probability, and to mark out
clearly the limitations of the subject. It is indeed someth