Over one window is a group of poets and musicians on Mount Parnassus, round a central figure of Apollo ; it contains many heads of great beauty and fine portraits of Dante and Petrarch. Over the opposite window are graceful figures of the three chief Virtues, and at one side Gregory IX. (a portrait of Julius II.) presenting his volume of decretals to a jurist; on the other Justinian presents his code to Trebonianus.
The next room, the Stanza d'Eliodoro, was painted in The room is so called from the fresco representing the expul sion of Heliodorus from the Temple (2 Macc. iii.), which is an allusion to the struggles between Louis XII. of France and Julius II. Its chief motive is the glorification of the pontificate, with insistence on the temporal power. The main incident of this picture is the angel visitant on the horse. The group of women and children on the left is very beautiful, and the figures of Julius II. and his attendants are nobly designed. This picture was completed in 1512. Over one window is shown the scene of the Miracle at Bolsena of 1264, when the real presence was proved to a doubting priest by the appearance of blood-stains on the Cor poral. (See ORVIETO.) Julius II. is introduced kneeling before the altar; and the lower spaces on each side of the windows are filled with two groups, that on the left with women, that on the right with officers of the papal guard. The last group is one of the most masterly of all throughout the stanze : each face is a marvel of expression and power, and of technical skill. The next fresco in date is that of the Repulse of Attila from the walls of Rome by I., miraculously aided by the apparitions of St. Peter and St. Paul; it contains another allusion to the papal quarrels with France. It was begun in the lifetime of Julius II., but was only half finished at the time of his death in 1513; thus it happens that the portrait of his successor, the Medici pope Leo X., appears twice over, first as a cardinal riding behind the pope, painted before the death of Julius II., and again in the character of S. Leo, instead of the portrait of Julius which Raphael was about to paint. A pen sketch in the Louvre by Raphael shows Julius II. in the place afterwards occupied by Leo X. In 1514 he painted the "Deliverance of St.
Peter from Prison," with a further political allusion. It is skil fully arranged to fit the awkward space round the window, and is remarkable for an attempt to combine and contrast the three different qualities of light coming from the room, the glory round the angel, and the torches of the sentinels.
For the so-called Stanza dell' Incendio Raphael designed and partly painted the "Incendio del Borgo," a fire in the Borgo or Leonine City, which was miraculously stopped by Leo IV. ap pearing and making the sign of the cross at a window in the Vatican. On the background is shown the facade of the old basilica of St. Peter, not yet destroyed when this fresco was painted. One group on the left, in the foreground, is remarkable for its vigour and powerful drawing; the motive is taken from the burning of Troy; a fine nude figure of Aeneas issues from the burning houses bearing on his back the old Anchises and leading the boy Ascanius by the hand. Many studies for this picture exist. This is the last of the stanze frescoes on which Raphael himself worked. Others in this room designed by him and painted by Giulio Romano and other pupils were the "Battle of Ostia," and the "Oath of Leo III. before Charlemagne." The enormous fresco of the "Defeat of Maxentuis by Constantine," in the Saladi Constantino, was painted by Giulio Romano, soon after Raphael's death, from a sketch by the latter.
The paintings in the stanze were only a small part of Raphael's work between 1509 and 1513. To this period belong the Madonna of Foligno (Vatican), painted in 1511 for Sigismondo Conti. Of about the same date are the gem-like Garvagh Madonna (National Gallery, once in the possession of the Aldobrandini family), the Diademed Virgin of the Louvre, and the Madonna del Pesce at Madrid. The last was executed in 1513 for S. Domenico in Naples. In addition to other easel pictures a num ber of his finest portraits belong to this period—that of Julius II. the original of which is lost (copies in the Uffizi and National Gallery, London) ; the Tommaso Inghirami in the Gardner Col lection, Boston; the Baldassare Castiglione of the Louvre; and the portrait of a cardinal in the Prado, Madrid.