-the painters who worked in company with Raphael lived in
perfect harmony, as if all bad feelings were extinguished in his
presence, and every base, unworthy thought had passed from their minds.
This was because the artists were at once subdued by his obliging
manners and by his surpassing merit, but more than all by the spell of
his natural character, which was so full of affectionate kindness, that
not only men, but even the very brutes, respected him. He always had a
great number of artists employed for him, helping them and teaching them
with the kindness of a father to his children, rather than as a master
directing his scholars. For which reason it was observed he never went
to court without being accompanied from his very door by perhaps fifty
painters who took pleasure in thus attending him to do him honour. In
short, he lived more as a sovereign than as a painter. And thus, O Art
of Painting! thou too, then, could account thyself most happy, since an
artist was thine, who, by his skill and by his moral excellence exalted
thee to the highest heaven!"

Raphael was the son of Giovanni Sanzio, or di Santi, of Urbino. He
received his first education as an artist from his father, whom,
however, he lost in his eleventh year. As early as 1495 probably, he
entered the school of Pietro Perugino, at Perugia, where he remained
till about his twentieth year.

The "Umbrian School," in which Raphael received his first education, and
in which he is accordingly placed, is distinguished from the Florentine,
of which it may be said to have been an offshoot, by several
well-defined characteristics. Chief of these are, first, the more
sentimental expression of religious feeling, and second, the greater
attention paid to distance as compared with the principal figures; both
of which are explainable on the ground of local circumstances. They
reflect the difference between the bustling intellectual activity of
Florence and the dreamy existence but broader horizon of the dwellers
in the upper valley of the Tiber. In the beautiful _Nativity_ of PIERO
DELLA FRANCESCA (No. 908 in the National Gallery) we see something akin
to the Florentine pictures, and yet something more besides. Piero shared
with Paolo Uccello the eager desire to discover the secrets of
perspective; but in addition he seems to have been influenced by the
study of nature herself, in the open air, as Uccello never was. His
pupil, LUCA SIGNORELLI (1441-1523), was more fo