ing many of his pictures well engraved by a contemporary
engraver named Raimondi.

Like Giotto, Raphael was the friend of the most distinguished Italians
of his day, including Count Castiglione, and the poet Ariosto. He was
notably the warm friend of his fellow-painters both at home and abroad,
with the exception of Michael Angelo. A drawing of his own, which
Raphael sent, in his kindly interchange of such sketches, to Albert
Duerer, is, I think, preserved at Nueremberg. The sovereign princes of
Italy, above all Leo X., were not contented with being munificent
patrons to Raphael, they treated him with the most marked consideration.
The Cardinal Bibbiena proposed the painter's marriage with his niece,
ensuring her a dowry of three thousand gold crowns, but Maria di
Bibbiena died young, ere the marriage could be accomplished; and
Raphael, who was said to be little disposed to the match, did not long
survive her. He caught cold, as some report, from his engrossing
personal superintendence of the Roman excavations; and, as others
declare, from his courtly assiduity in keeping an appointment with the
Pope, was attacked by fever, and died on his birth-day, April 6th, 1520,
having completed his thirty-seventh year.

All Rome and Italy mourned for him. When his body lay in state, to be
looked at and wept over by multitudes, his great unfinished picture of
the 'Transfiguration' was hung above the bed. He was buried in a spot
chosen by himself in his lifetime, and, as it happened, not far from the
resting-place of his promised bride. Doubts having been raised as to
Raphael's grave, search was made, and his body was exhumed in 1833, and
re-buried with great pomp. Raphael's life and that of Rubens form the
ideal painter's life--bountiful, splendid, unclouded, and terminating
ere it sees eclipse or decay--to all in whom the artistic temperament is
united to a genial, sensuous, pleasure-loving nature.

Raphael was not above the middle height, and slightly made. He was
sallow in colour, with brown eyes, and a full yet delicate mouth; but
his beautiful face, like that of our English Shakespeare, is familiar to
most of us. With regard to Raphael's face, the amount of womanliness in
it is a striking characteristic. One hears sometimes that no man's
character is complete without its share of womanliness: surely Raphael
had a double share, for womanliness is the most distinctive quality in
his face, along with that vague shade of pensive