f. But, apparently, it answered its purpose. It freed
him from preoccupation with the work of others. When his great
opportunity came to him, in the commission to decorate the Camera della
Segnatura, his painfully acquired knowledge was sufficiently at his
command to give him no further trouble. He could concentrate himself on
the essential part of his problem, the creation of an entirely
appropriate, dignified, and beautiful decorative design. It was the work
for which he was born, and he succeeded so immediately and so admirably
in it that neither he nor any one else has ever been able to fill such
spaces so perfectly again.

There are fourteen important compositions in the room. The decoration of
the ceiling had already been begun by Sodoma, and Sodoma's decorative
framework Raphael allowed to remain; partly, perhaps, from courtesy,
more probably because its general disposition was admirable and not to
be improved on. If Sodoma had begun any of the larger paintings which
were to fill his frames they were removed to make way for the new work.
There has always been a great deal of discussion as to whether Raphael
himself invented the admirable scheme of subjects by which the room was
made to illustrate the Renaissance ideal of culture with its division
into the four great fields of learning: divinity, philosophy (including
science), poetry, and law. In reality, the question is of little
importance. There seems to be at least one bit of internal evidence, to
be mentioned presently, that even here the artist did not have a
perfectly free hand, as we know he did not later. Whoever thought of the
subjects, it was Raphael who discovered how to treat them in such a way
as to make of this room the most perfectly planned piece of decoration
in the world. Sodoma had left, on the vaulting, four circular medallions
and four rectangular spaces which were to be filled with figure
compositions. In the circles, each directly above one of the great wall
spaces, Raphael placed figures personifying Theology, Philosophy,
Poetry and Justice; in the rectangles he illustrated these subjects with
the stories of "The Fall of Man," "Apollo and Marsyas," and "The
Judgment of Solomon," and with that figure, leaning over a celestial
globe, which must be meant for Science. All of these panels are on
curved surfaces, and Raphael's decorative instinct led him, on this
account and to preserve the supremacy of the great wall spaces below, to
suppress