eautiful Mary had many lovers all wishing
to marry her. Now here was a difficulty indeed, and so the suitors
were required to put by their rough staves for a night. The promise
was that in the morning one would be in blossom, and its owner should
have Mary for his wife. We can imagine that these lovers were anxious
for day to dawn, and that all but one was sad indeed at the result. In
the morning there were the rods, all save one, brown and rough and
bare, but that one lay there alive with delicate buds and flowers,
and all the air was full of fragrance. This was Joseph's, and he went
away glad and brought his young bride. This first great picture of
Raphael's represented this marriage taking place at the foot of the
Temple steps. The disappointed lovers are present and, I am sorry to
say, one of them is showing his anger by breaking his barren rod even
while the marriage is taking place.

The first and the last work of a great man are always interesting,
and that is why I have told you so much about this picture. You
will be still more interested in Raphael's last picture, "_The
Transfiguration_."

While in the studio he made many friends. With one he went to Siena to
assist him in some fresco painting he had to do there. Of course you
know that fresco is painting on wet plaster so that the colors dry in
with the mortar.

The conversation of the studio was often of art and artists, and so
the beautiful city of Florence must often have been an engaging
subject. Think of what Florence was at this time, and how an artist
must have thrilled at its very name! Beautiful as a flower, with her
marble palaces, her fine churches, her lily-like bell-tower! What a
charm was added when within her walls Leonardo da Vinci was painting,
Michael Angelo carving, Savonarola preaching. In the early years of
Raphael's apprenticeship, the voice of the preacher had been silenced,
but still, "with the ineffable left hand," Da Vinci painted, and still
the marble chips dropped from Angelo's chisel as a _David_ grew to
majesty beneath his touch.

To Raphael, with his love of the beautiful, with his zeal to learn,
Florence was the city of all others that he longed to see. At last his
dream was to be realized. A noble woman of Urbino gave him a letter to
the Governor of Florence, expressing the wish that the young artist
might be allowed to see all the art treasures of the city. The first
day of the year 1505 greeted Raphael in Florence, the