overy of Rembrandt and Velazquez--the romanticist and the
naturalist--and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
It was but a few years ago that the author of a volume of essays on art
was gravely praised by a reviewer for the purely accidental circumstance
that that volume contained no essay on Raphael; and a little later the
writer of a book on the pictures in Rome "had to confess unutterable
boredom" in the presence of the Stanze of the Vatican.

It is not probable that any critic who greatly valued his reputation, or
who had any serious reputation to value, would take quite this tone;
but, leaving out of consideration the impressionistic and ultra-modern
criticism which ignores Raphael altogether, it is instructive to note
the way in which a critic so steeped in Italian art as Mr. Berenson
approaches the fallen prince. The artist who used to be considered the
greatest of draughtsmen he will hardly admit to be a draughtsman at all,
ranking him far below Pollaiuolo and positively speaking of him as "a
poor creature, most docile and patient." As a colorist and a manipulator
of paint, he places him with Sebastiano del Piombo--that is, among the
mediocrities. Almost the only serious merit, from his point of view,
which he will allow him is a mastery in the rendering of space, shared
in nearly equal measure by Perugino, as, to some extent, by nearly all
the painters of the Umbrian school. For, while he admits that Raphael
was the greatest master of composition that Europe has produced, he
evidently thinks of composition, as do so many other moderns, as a
matter of relatively little importance.

It is not Raphael's popularity that is in question; that is, perhaps, as
great as ever it was. His works, in one form or another of reproduction,
from the finest carbon print to the cheapest lithograph, are still to be
found, in the humblest homes as in the most splendid, in nearly every
quarter of the globe. That popularity was always based on what Berenson
calls the "illustrative" qualities of Raphael's work, on the beauty of
his women, the majesty of his men; on his ability to tell a story as we
like it told and to picture a world that we wish might be real. One may
not be prepared to consider these illustrative qualities so negligible
as do many modern critics, or to echo Mr. Berenson's phrase about "that
which in art ... is so unimportant as what ... we call beauty." One
might point out that the greatest artis