ubens became aware of their existence, and
advised Charles I, to buy the set, to be employed in the tapestry
manufactory established by James I. at Mortlake. Brought to this country
in the slips which the weavers had copied, the fate of the cartoons was
still precarious. Cromwell bought them in Charles I.'s art collection,
and Louis XIV, sought, but failed, to re-buy them. They fell into
farther neglect, and were well-nigh forgotten, when Sir Godfrey Kneller
recalled them to notice, and induced William III, to have the slips
pasted together, and stretched upon linen, and put in a room set apart
for them at Hampton Court, whence they were transferred, within the last
ten years, for the greater advantage of artists and the public, to
Kensington Museum.

The woven tapestries for which the cartoons were designed had quite as
chequered a career. In the two sacks of Rome by French soldiers, the
tapestries were seized, carried off, and two of them burnt for the
bullion in the thread. At last they were restored to the Vatican, where
they hang in their faded magnificence, a monument of Leo X, and of
Raphael. An additional set of ten tapestry cartoons were supplied to the
Vatican by Raphael's scholars.

Raphael painted for the Chigi family in their palace, which is now the
Villa Farnesina, scenes from the history of Cupid and Psyche, and the
Triumph of Galatea, subjects which show how the passion for classical
mythology that distinguishes the next generation, was beginning to work.
To these last years belong his 'Madonna di San Sisto,' so named from its
having been painted for the convent of St Sixtus at Piacenza, and his
last picture, the 'Transfiguration,' with which he was still engaged
when death met him unexpectedly.

Raphael, as the Italians say, lived more like a '_principe_' (prince)
than a '_pittore_' (painter). He had a house in Rome, and a villa in the
neighbourhood, and on his death left a considerable fortune to his
heirs. There has not been wanting a rumour that his life of a principe
was a dissipated and prodigal life; but this ugly rumour, even if it had
more evidence to support it, is abundantly disproven by the nature of
Raphael's work, and by the enormous amount of that work, granting him
the utmost assistance from his crowd of scholars. He had innumerable
commissions, and retained an immense school from all parts of Italy, the
members of which adored their master. Raphael had the additional
advantage of hav