Michael Angelo appears to have had no infancy; if he had, we are not acquainted with it. ills earliest works equal in principle and elements of style, the vigorous offspring of his virility. Raphael we see in his cradle. We hear him stammer ; but propriety rocked the cradle, and character formed his lips. Even in the trammels of Pietro Perugino, dry and servile in his style of design, formal and gothic in his composition, he traced what was essential, and separated it from what was accidental in figure and subject. The works of Leonardo, and the cartoons of Pisa, invigorated his eye, but it was the an tique that completed the system which he had begun to establish on nature. From the antique he learned dis crimination and propriety of form. lie found, that in the construction of the body, the articulation of the bones was the true cause of ease and grace in the actions of the limbs, and that the knowledge of this was the true cause of the superiority of the ancients. He discovered that certain features were fitted for certain expressions, and peculiar to certain characters ; that such a head, such hands, and such feet, are the stamen or the growth of such a body, and on physiognomy established unifor mity of parts. ‘Vhen he designed, his intention was immediately directed to the primary intention and mo tive of his figure, next to its general measure, then to the bones and their articulation, from them to the prin cipal muscles, or those eminently wanted, to their atten dant nerves, and, last, to the more or less essential mi nutx; but the character part of the subject is infallibly the characteristic part of his design, whether it be in ra pid sketch, or a more finishing drawing. The strokes of his pen or pencils themselves are characteristic : they follow the direction and texture of the part ; flesh, in their rounding tendons, in straight, bones in angular lines.
Such was the felicity and propriety of Raphael, when employed in the dramatic evolutions of' character ! Both suffered when he attempted to abstract the forms of sublimity and beauty. The painter of humanity not often wielded with success super-human weapons. His gods never rose above prophetic or patriarchal if the finger of Michael Angelo impressed the divine countenance oftener with sternness than awe, the gods of Raphael are sometimes too affable or mild, like hint who speaks to Jacob in a ceiling of the Vatican ; or too violent like him who separates light from darkness in the loggia of the same place. But though, to speak with
things, he was chiefly made to walk with dignity on earth, he soared above it in the conception of Christ on Tabor, and still more in the form of the angelic counte nance that withers the strength of Heliodorus.
Of ideal female beauty, though he himself tells us in his letter to Count Castiglione, .that from its scarcity in life, he made attempts to reach it by an idea formed in his own mind, he certainly wanted that standard which guides him in character ; his goddesses and mythologic females are no more than aggravations of the generic power of NI ichael Angelo. Roundness, mildness, sanc timony, and insipidity compose in general the features and airs of his Madonnas, transcripts of the nursury or some favourite face. The Madonna della Impauato, the Madonna della Sedia, and the Madonna Bella, show more or less of this insipidity, which arises chiefly from the high rounded smooth forehead, the shaven vacuity between the arched semicircular eye-brows, their eleva tion above the eyes, and the ungraceful division and scanty growth of hair. This indeed might be the result of his desire not to stain the virgin character of sanctity with the most distant hint of coquetry or meretricious charms; for in his Magdalens he throws the hair with Luxuriant profusion, and surrounds the breast and shoul ders with undulating waves and plaids of gold. The character of Mary Magdalene met his. It was the cha racter of a passion. It is evident from every picture or design, at every period of his art in which she had a part, that he supposed her enamoured. When she follows the body of the Saviour to the tomb, or throws herself dishevelled over his feet, or addresses him when he bears his cross, the cast of her features, her mode, her action, are the character of love in agony. \Vhen the drama inspired Raphael, his women became definitions of grace and pathos at once. Such is the exquisite fite of turn of the hall' averted kneeling female with two children among the spectators of the punishment inflicted on He liodorus ; her attitude, the turn of her neck, supplies all face, and intimates more than he ever " expressed by feature." Some account of the cartoons of Raphael, and minute notices of several of his pictures will be found in our article PAINTING. See Duppa's Life of Raphael, prefixed to his " Heads from the Fresco pic tures of Raffaello in the Vatican," 1802; and Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses.