ts, from Phidias to Rembrandt,
have occupied themselves with illustration, and that to formulate the
ideals of a race and an epoch is no mean task. But, for the moment, we
may neglect all that, our present inquiry being why an artist, once
counted the greatest of all, is no longer considered very significant by
those who measure by purely artistic standards rather than by that of
illustrative success and consequent popularity.

We may also leave out of our present consideration Raphael's achievement
in the suggestion of space. It is a very real quality and a high one. It
has doubtless always been an important element in the enjoyability of
Raphael's art, as it is almost the only enjoyable element, for many of
us, in the art of Perugino. But it is an element that has only very
recently been clearly perceived to exist. If it was enjoyed by the
artists and critics, from Raphael's day almost to our own, they were
unconscious of the fact, and the probability is that we enjoy it more
than they did. It will not account for the estimation in which they held
Raphael, and still less will it account for the relative lack of
interest in him to-day.

In truth the reason why many modern critics and painters almost dislike
Raphael is the very reason for which he was so greatly revered. Coming
in the nick of time, at the close of an epoch of investigation, himself
a man of wide culture and quick intellect but of no special originality
or emotional power, he learned from all his predecessors what they had
to teach and, choosing from the elements of their art those which were
suited to his purpose, formed a perfectly balanced and noble style which
was immediately accepted as the only style suitable to the expression of
lofty ideas in monumental form. He became the lawgiver, the founder of
classicism, the formulator of the academic ideal. Not to admire him was
to confess oneself a barbarian, and even those who did not really care
for his art hardly dared to say so. As long as the academic ideal
retained any validity his supremacy endured, and it was only with the
definitive turning of modern art into the paths of romanticism and
naturalism that revolt became possible.

But when the world became tired of Raphaelism it inevitably became
unjust to Raphael. It forgot that it was not he who had made his art the
test of that of others--who had erected what, with him, was a
spontaneous and original creation into a rigid system of laws. It
con