presents
the highest manifestation of the art of painting in the Renaissance. For
the true note in art lies in spiritual perception. Not so brilliant a
colorist as Titian, he was more the interpreter of the extension of
human activity into that realm of the life more abundant, and with his
extraordinary facility of execution he united exquisite refinement and
unerring sense of beauty and the masterly power in composition that
fairly created for the spectator the visions that his soul beheld. "I
say to you," said Mr. Bryce recently in a press interview,--"I say to
you, each oncoming tide of life requires and needs men of lofty thought
who shall dream for it, sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies,
formulate its ideals and voice its spirit." One of those men of lofty
thought who thus dream for the ages was Raphael, and his power and glory
have left an ineffaceable impress upon human life. He was the divinely
appointed messenger of beauty, and he was never disobedient to the
heavenly vision.

"Time hath no tide but must abide
The servant of Thy will;
Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme
The ranging stars stand still."

The decline of art after Michael Angelo and Raphael was marked. The very
splendor and power of their creations, instead of inspiring those who
immediately followed them, produced almost the inertia of despair. In
the reverence and awe and admiration with which these transcendent
masterpieces were approached any power to originate seemed futile by
contrast. Imitation rather than creation became the method adopted,
resulting in an increased poverty of design and feeble execution. The
art of the sixteenth century deteriorated rapidly till the baroco style
was in evidence. One reason, too, for the decline was in that art was no
longer so exclusively dedicated to the high service of religion, but
aimed, instead, to please and to procure patrons, and thus were all
worthy standards lowered to pernicious levels.

A sculptor who left his impress upon the sixteenth-century art was
Lorenzo Bernini, a Neapolitan (born in 1598) who died in Rome in 1685.
The work of Bernini has a certain fascination and airy touch that, while
it sometimes degenerates into the merely fantastic and even into tawdry
and puerile affectations, has at its best a refinement and grace that
lend to his sculptures an enduring charm, as seen in his "Apollo and
Daphne" (a work executed in his eighteenth year) which is