out of the fusion a
creative new force, which is his genius. What remains after our
analysis is the essential Raphael.

Raphael's residence in Florence is the period of his Madonnas. From
Florence Raphael, twenty-five years old and now a master in his
own right, was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II; and here he
placed his talents and his mastership at the disposal of the Church.
He found time to paint Madonnas and a series of powerful and
lovely portraits; but these years in Rome, which brought his brief
life to a close, are preeminently the period of the great frescoes,
which are his supreme achievement. But even in these mature years,
and though he was himself the founder of a school, he did not cease
to learn. Michelangelo was already in Rome, and now Raphael came
more immediately under his influence, although not to submit to it
but to use it for his own ends. In Rome were revealed to him the
culture of an older and riper civilization and the glories and
perfectness of an elder art. Raphael laid antiquity under contribution
to the consummation of his art and the fulfillment and complete
realization of his genius.

This analysis of the elements and influences of Raphael's career as
an artist--inadequate as it necessarily is--may help us to define his
distinctive accomplishment. A comparison of his work with that of
his predecessors and contemporaries serves to disengage his
essential significance. By nature he was generous and tender; the
bent of his mind was scholarly; and he was impelled by a passion for
restrained and formal beauty. Chiefly characteristic of his mental
make-up was his power of assimilation, which allowed him to
respond to many and diverse influences and in the end to dominate
and use them. He gathered up in himself the achievements of two
centuries of experiment and progress, and fusing the various
elements, he created by force of his genius a new result and stamped
it with the seal perfection. Giotto, to whom religion was a reality,
was deeply in earnest about his message, and he phrased it as best he
could with the means at his command; his end was expression.
Raphael, under the patronage of wealthy dilettanti and in the service
of a worldly and splendor-loving Church, delighted in his
knowledge and his skill; he worshiped art, and his end was beauty.
The genius of Giotto is a first shoot, vigorous and alive, breaking
ground hardily, and tentatively pushing into freer air. The genius of
Ra