, must look at this work, wherein Raffaello
made Him in perspective over that mount, in a sky of exceeding
brightness, with Moses and Elias, who, illumined by a dazzling
splendour, burst into life in His light. Prostrate on the ground, in
attitudes of great beauty and variety, are Peter, James, and John;
one has his head to the earth, and another, shading his eyes with
his hands, is defending himself from the rays and intense light of
the splendour of Christ. He, clothed in snow-white raiment, with His
arms outstretched and His head raised, appears to reveal the Divine
essence and nature of all the Three Persons united and concentrated
in Himself by the perfect art of Raffaello, who seems to have
summoned up all his powers in such a manner, in order to show the
supreme force of his art in the countenance of Christ, that, after
finishing this, the last work that he was to do, he never again
touched a brush, being overtaken by death.

[Illustration: RAFFAELLO DA URBINO: THE THREE GRACES

(_Chantilly, 38. Panel_)]

Now, having described the works of this most excellent craftsman,
before I come to relate other particulars of his life and death, I
do not wish to grudge the labour of saying something, for the
benefit of the men of our arts, about the various manners of
Raffaello. He, then, after having imitated in his boyhood the manner
of his master, Pietro Perugino, which he made much better in
draughtsmanship, colouring, and invention, believed that he had done
enough; but he recognized, when he had reached a riper age, that he
was still too far from the truth. For, after seeing the works of
Leonardo da Vinci, who had no peer in the expressions of heads both
of men and of women, and surpassed all other painters in giving
grace and movement to his figures, he was left marvelling and
amazed; and in a word, the manner of Leonardo pleasing him more than
any other that he had ever seen, he set himself to study it, and
abandoning little by little, although with great difficulty, the
manner of Pietro, he sought to the best of his power and knowledge
to imitate that of Leonardo. But for all his diligence and study, in
certain difficulties he was never able to surpass Leonardo; and
although it appears to many that he did surpass him in sweetness and
in a kind of natural facility, nevertheless he was by no means
superior to him in that sublime groundwork of conceptions and that
grandeur of art in which few have been the peers of