still more wonderful past. I wish, while you
are thinking about this, that you would get a picture of the Roman
Forum and notice its groups of columns, its triumphal arches, its
ruined walls. You will then certainly appreciate more fully what
Raphael felt as he went about this city of historic ruins.

[Illustration: MADONNA OF THE FISH. _Raphael._]

The Pope received the young artist cordially and at once gave him the
vast commission of painting in fresco three large rooms, or _stanze_,
of the Vatican. In addition, he was to decorate the gallery, or
corridor, called the _loggia_, leading to these apartments from the
stairway. With the painting of these walls Raphael and his pupils were
more or less busy during the remainder of the artist's short life. A
great many religious and historic subjects were used, besides some
invented by Raphael himself, as when he represented _Poetry_ by Mount
Parnassus inhabited by all the great poets past and present. In these
rooms some of his best work is done. Every year thousands of people go
to see these pictures and come away more than ever enraptured with
Raphael and his work.

In the loggia are the paintings known collectively as Raphael's Bible.
Of the fifty-two pictures in the thirteen arcades of this corridor all
but four represent Old Testament scenes. The others are taken from the
New Testament. Although Raphael's pupils assisted largely in these
frescoes they are very beautiful and will always rank high among the
art works of the time.

Raphael's works seem almost perfect even from the beginning, yet he
was always studying to get the great points in the work of others and
to perfect his own. Perhaps this is the best lesson we may learn from
his intellectual life--the lesson of unending study and assimilation.
He was greatly interested in the ruins of Rome and we know that he
studied them deeply and carefully. This is very evident in the
Madonnas of his Roman period. They have a strength and a power to
make one think great thoughts that is not so marked in the pictures of
his Florentine period.

[Illustration: THE ARCHANGEL. Detail from _Madonna of the Fish_.
_Raphael._]

The "_Madonna of the Fish_" is one of the most beautiful of this time.
It was painted originally for a chapel in Naples where the blind
prayed for sight, and where, legend relates, they were often
miraculously answered. The divine Mother, a little older than
Raphael's virgins