e drawn aside and
there, floating on the clouds, is the Virgin full length, presenting
the Holy Child to the world. It is far more than a mother and child,
for one sees in the Madonna a look suggesting that she sees vaguely
the darkness of Calvary and the glory of the resurrection. This is no
ordinary child, either, that she holds, for He sees beyond this world
into eternity and that His is no common destiny;--at least, one feels
these things as we gaze at the lovely apparition on its background of
clouds and innumerable angel heads. St. Sixtus on one side would know
more of this mystery, while St. Barbara on the other is dazzled by the
vision and turns aside her lovely face. Below are the two cherubs, the
final touch of love, as it were, to this marvellous picture.

It is said that the picture was completed at first without these
cherubs and that they were afterwards added when Raphael found two
little boys resting their arms on a balustrade, gazing intently up at
his picture.

This painting has a room to itself in the Dresden Gallery, where the
most frivolous forget to chat and the thoughtful sit for hours in
quiet meditation under its magic spell. One man says, "I could spend
an hour every day for years looking at this picture and on the last
day of the last year discover some new beauty and a new joy."

There was now great division of opinion in Rome as to whether Angelo
or Raphael were the greater painter. Cardinal de Medici ordered two
pictures for the Cathedral of Narbonne, in France, one by Raphael and
one by Sebastian Piombo, a favorite pupil of Angelo's. People knew
that Angelo would never openly compete with Raphael, but they also
felt sure that he would assist his pupil. The subject chosen by
Raphael was "_The Transfiguration_." But suddenly, even before this
latest commission was completed, that magic hand had been stopped by
death. The picture, though finished by Raphael's pupils, is a great
work. The ascending Lord is the point of greatest interest in the
upper, or celestial part, while the father with his demoniac child,
holds our attention in the lower, or terrestrial portion. At his
funeral this unfinished picture hung above the dead painter, and his
sorrowing friends must have felt, as Longfellow wrote of Hawthorne
when he lay dead with an unfinished story on his bier,--

"Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clew regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower