orifying, Raphael too becomes, of course, a
painter of portraits. We may foresee them already in masterly series,
from Maddalena Doni, a kind of younger, more virginal sister of La
Gioconda, to cardinals and popes--to that most sensitive of all
portraits, the "Violin-player," if it be really his. But then, on the
other hand, the influence of such portraiture will be felt also in his
inventive work, in a certain reality there, a certain convincing
loyalty to experience and observation. In his most elevated religious
work he will still keep, for security at least, close to nature, and
the truth of nature. His modelling of the visible surface is lovely
because he understands, can see the hidden causes [51] of momentary
action in the face, the hands--how men and animals are really made and
kept alive. Set side by side, then, with that portrait of Maddalena
Doni, as forming together a measure of what he has learned at Florence,
the "Madonna del Gran Duca," which still remains there. Call it on
revision, and without hesitation, the loveliest of his Madonnas,
perhaps of all Madonnas; and let it stand as representative of as many
as fifty or sixty types of that subject, onwards to the Sixtine
Madonna, in all the triumphancy of his later days at Rome. Observe the
veritable atmosphere about it, the grand composition of the drapery,
the magic relief, the sweetness and dignity of the human hands and
faces, the noble tenderness of Mary's gesture, the unity of the thing
with itself, the faultless exclusion of all that does not belong to its
main purpose; it is like a single, simple axiomatic thought. Note
withal the novelty of its effect on the mind, and you will see that
this master of style (that's a consummate example of what is meant by
style) has been still a willing scholar in the hands of Da Vinci. But
then, with what ease also, and simplicity, and a sort of natural
success not his!

It was in his twenty-fifth year that Raphael came to the city of the
popes, Michelangelo being already in high favour there. For the
remaining years of his life he paces the same streets with that grim
artist, who was so great a [52] contrast with himself, and for the
first time his attitude towards a gift different from his own is not
that of a scholar, but that of a rival. If he did not become the
scholar of Michelangelo, it would be difficult, on the other hand, to
trace anywhere in Michelangelo's work the counter influence usual with