Along with these greater undertakings Raphael executed numerous easel pictures. His portraits are admirable realistic productions with a strong and unaffected conception of character, belonging, indeed, to the greatest portraiture that has ever been produced. Among the principal examples, besides those wonderful likenesses in his frescoes, is that of "Julius H.," surviving in a number of examples, of which the original is probably in the Pitti Palace. The old man is represented as seated in an arm-ehair, engaged in deep medita tion. Other celebrated specimens are the por traits of Leo X. (151S) with two cardinals, a splendid piece of realism; of Cardinal Bibbiena, of which the original is at Madrid, and a good replica in the Pitti Palace; of Tommaso Inghe mini at Volterra; of Baldassare Castiglione and Joanna of Aragon, in the Louvre:, and the beautiful "Donna Velata." the prototype of the Sistine Madonna, in Pitti Palace. The celebrated "Fornarina," formerly supposed to be a portrait of Raphael's beloved, is now attributed to Sebas tiano del Piombo (q.v.).
Among his religious pictures. the greater num ber were Madonnas. most of them executed by his pupils. (For an enumeration and description. see MADONNA.) The best example of his early Roman period is the "Madonna della Sedia" or "Seggiola" (Pitti Palace), so called from the chair upon which she is seated. The Virgin is represented as a beautiful Italian woman in picturesque Roman folk costume. The expres sion of sublime maternal love in this picture has never been excelled. The last and grandest of all of his Madonnas, the consummation and perfee tion of all such efforts, is the "Sistine Madonna" (Dresden Gallery). Painted as an altarpiece for the Church of San Sisto at Piacenza, it was fin ished just before Raphael's death. The Virgin is not represented as a mother, but as the all powerful Queen of Heaven descending from the clouds, which are themselves composed of the heads of thousands of cherubs. The Christ-child looks with thoughtful eyes, as if conscious of his destiny as a Saviour of the world, while on either side Saint Sixtus and Saint Catherine kneel in adoration. At the base of the picture are the two celebrated cherubs.
His other religious pictures typify the waking religious consciousness of Italy in reply to the Reformation of the North: "Lo Spasimo di Sicilia" (Christ sinking beneath the Cross) (Madrid) ; "The Vision of Ezekiel" ( I'itti Palace), minute in execution and beautiful in color; the celebrated 'Saint Cecilia" (1515, Bologna ), surrounded by four saints, listening with varied expressions of ecstasy to the heavenly chords; "Saint Michel Crushing Satan" (1518, Louvre) ; and **The Transfiguration" (Vatican), left unfinished at Raphaers death, and completed by Giulio Romano.
As an architect Raphael was not of the same importance as a painter. He was a disciple of Bramante, whose plan of Saint Peter's he continued, though he also had one of his own. (See SAINT PETER'S CHURCII.) The Farnesina is usually ascribed to Peruzzi. and of his other palaces the Palazzo Pandolfini at Florence is the only one carried out in acco•daunce with his plans. His eldef work, the Villa Madama, built about 1510 for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, dis plays forms of simple majesty. As a sculptor he is reputed to have carved the "Boy Astride of a Dolphin" (Saint Petersburg). hut the at tribution is doubtful. He also tried his hand at poetry. hut his few sonnets are amateur in char acter.
Raphael died on Good Friday (April 0), 1520, at the age of thirty-seven, as a result of a fever contracted during the excavations in Rome. All Rome mourned over his loss, and lie was interred with great honor in the Pantheon. His char acter, like his art. was a perfect harmony of the elements which go to make life beautiful, and his contemporaries valued the one as highly as the other.
The opinion of Raphael's contemporaries, that his work was the highest perfection of pictorial art, has met with dissent among certain modern artists and critics. who find him lacking in this of that technical quality. But while he did not attain the very highest in all technical qualities, perhaps no other man possessed in such a high degree so many qualities which go to make lip the perfect artist. His work embodies the hest of all the Middle Italian schools, and it is. in this sense, the culmination of Italian painting. To whatever he adopted he added a harmony and grace. distinctly his own, attaining the nearest to the universal of any artist since the Greeks. And in one purely technical quality Raphael has never been surpassed by any artist. In his small pictures as well as in his great fres coes, in arrangement as well as in the treatment of space, his composition is faultless.
The chief cause of Raphael's great popularity with the general public is that lie was what Berenson calls 'a lovable illustrator.' With an imagination that has never been surpassed, lie has, better than any other one. embodied our conception of antiquity, translating it into forms surpassing our fairest dreams. He has Hellenized the Hebraic universe. creating, in place of the stern personages of the Old and New Testament, those beautiful, ideal types which will last as long as art lasts. In his Madonnas and ideal figures he has created the types of womanhood which "embody for the great number of culti vated men their ideals and spiritual aspirations."