roti, she wished to be
vanquished, in Raffaello, by art and character together. And in
truth, since the greater part of the craftsmen who had lived up to
that time had received from nature a certain element of savagery and
madness, which, besides making them strange and eccentric, had
brought it about that very often there was revealed in them rather
the obscure darkness of vice than the brightness and splendour of
those virtues that make men immortal, there was right good reason
for her to cause to shine out brilliantly in Raffaello, as a
contrast to the others, all the rarest qualities of the mind,
accompanied by such grace, industry, beauty, modesty, and excellence
of character, as would have sufficed to efface any vice, however
hideous, and any blot, were it ever so great. Wherefore it may be
surely said that those who are the possessors of such rare and
numerous gifts as were seen in Raffaello da Urbino, are not merely
men, but, if it be not a sin to say it, mortal gods; and that those
who, by means of their works, leave an honourable name written in
the archives of fame in this earthly world of ours, can also hope to
have to enjoy in Heaven a worthy reward for their labours and
merits.

[Illustration: RAPHAEL: S. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

(_S. Petersburg: Hermitage, 39. Panel_)]

Raffaello was born at Urbino, a very famous city in Italy, at three
o'clock of the night on Good Friday, in the year 1483, to a father
named Giovanni de' Santi, a painter of no great excellence, and yet
a man of good intelligence, well able to direct his children on that
good path which he himself had not been fortunate enough to have
shown to him in his boyhood. And since Giovanni knew how important
it is to rear infants, not with the milk of nurses, but with that of
their own mothers, no sooner was Raffaello born, to whom with happy
augury he gave that name at baptism, than he insisted that this his
only child--and he had no more afterwards--should be suckled by his
own mother, and that in his tender years he should have his
character formed in the house of his parents, rather than learn less
gentle or even boorish ways and habits in the houses of peasants or
common people. When he was well grown, he began to exercise him in
painting, seeing him much inclined to such an art, and possessed of
a very beautiful genius: wherefore not many years passed before
Raffaello, still a boy, became a great help to Giovanni in many
works that he exe