oth his hands
on a staff, and lost in thoughtful contemplation of the King and
Queen of Heaven, gazes with the adoration of a most saintly old man.
Both these pictures are exhibited on days of solemn festival.

By this time Raffaello had acquired much fame in Rome; but, although
his manner was graceful and held by all to be very beautiful, and
despite the fact that he had seen so many antiquities in that city,
and was for ever studying, nevertheless he had not yet given thereby
to his figures that grandeur and majesty which he gave to them from
that time onward. For it happened in those days that Michelagnolo
made the terrifying outburst against the Pope in the chapel, of
which we will speak in his Life; whence he was forced to fly to
Florence. Whereupon Bramante, having the keys of the chapel, allowed
Raffaello, who was his friend, to see it, to the end that he might
be able to learn the methods of Michelagnolo. And the sight of it
was the reason that Raffaello straightway repainted, although he had
already finished it, the Prophet Isaiah that is to be seen in S.
Agostino at Rome, above the S. Anne by Andrea Sansovino; in which
work, by means of what he had seen of Michelagnolo's painting, he
made the manner immeasurably better and more grand, and gave it
greater majesty. Wherefore Michelagnolo, on seeing afterwards the
work of Raffaello, thought, as was the truth, that Bramante had done
him that wrong on purpose in order to bring profit and fame to
Raffaello.

Not long after this, Agostino Chigi, a very rich merchant of Siena,
who was much the friend of every man of excellence, gave Raffaello
the commission to paint a chapel; and this he did because a short
time before Raffaello had painted for him in his softest manner, in
a loggia of his palace, now called the Chigi, in the Trastevere, a
Galatea in a car on the sea drawn by two dolphins, and surrounded by
Tritons and many sea-gods. Raffaello, then, having made the cartoon
for that chapel, which is at the entrance of the Church of S. Maria
della Pace, on the right hand as one goes into the church by the
principal door, executed it in fresco, in his new manner, which was
no little grander and more magnificent than his earlier manner. In
this painting Raffaello depicted some Prophets and Sibyls, before
Michelagnolo's chapel had been thrown open to view, although he had
seen it; and in truth it is held to be the best of his works, and
the most beautiful among so many