en seized with his last
illness. He had completed all the upper part of the composition, all the
ethereal vision, but the lower part of it was still unfinished, and in
this state the picture was hung over his bier, when, after his death, he
was laid out in his painting-room, and all his pupils and his friends,
and the people of Rome, came to look upon him for the last time; and
when those who stood round raised their eyes to the _Transfiguration_,
and then bent them on the lifeless form extended beneath it, "every
heart was like to burst with grief" (_faceva scoppiare l' anima di
dolore a ognuno che quivi guardava_), as, indeed, well it might.

Two-thirds of the price of the picture, 655 _duccati di camera_, had
already been paid by the Cardinal de' Medici; and, in the following
year, that part of the picture which Raphael had left unfinished was
completed by his pupil Giulio Romano, a powerful and gifted but not a
refined or elevated genius. He supplied what was wanting in the colour
and chiaroscuro according to Raphael's design, but not certainly as
Raphael would himself have done it. The sum which Giulio received he
bestowed as a dowry on his sister, when he gave her in marriage to
Lorenzetto the sculptor, who had also been a pupil and friend of
Raphael. The Cardinal did not send the picture to Narbonne, but,
unwilling to deprive Rome of such a masterpiece, he presented it to the
Church of San Pietro in Montorio, and sent in its stead the _Raising of
Lazarus_, by Sebastian del Piombo, now in our National Gallery. The
French carried off the _Transfiguration_ to Paris in 1797, and, when
restored, it was placed in the Vatican, where it now is. The _Communion
of St. Jerome_, by Domenichino, is opposite to it, and it is a sort of
fashion to compare them, and with some to give the preference to the
admirable picture by Domenichino; but the two are so different in aim
and conception, the merits of each are so different in kind, that I do
not see how any comparison can exist between them.

_The History of Our Lord, as exemplified in Works of Art_,
continued and completed by Lady Eastlake (2nd ed., London, 1865).

THE BULL

(_PAUL POTTER_)

EUGENE FROMENTIN

_The Lesson in Anatomy, The Night Watch_, and Paul Potter's _Bull_ are
the most celebrated things in Holland. To the latter the Museum at The
Hague owes a great part of the interest it inspires. It is not the
largest of Paul Potter's canvases; but i