d, he painted a Virgin incomparably more
beautiful than all the admirable Virgins he had painted before. Not a
single design, nor preparatory study, puts us on the trace of any
bringing forth of any of the parts of this picture.

However, if the image of this Virgin was traced on the canvas by a hand
suddenly inspired, I think that at the same time Raphael confronted his
inspiration with nature, and that, whilst resolutely springing towards
the infinite, he yet set himself face to face with reality. Perhaps,
strictly, he would have had no need of that; he had amassed so much, his
memory placed such numerous, varied, and exact documents at the service
of his will, that he had only to remember in order almost immediately to
produce an accomplished whole. Moreover, he had the model he wanted,
possessing without dominating it; and without losing sight of his ideal,
it was to this model that he applied himself for the embodiment of his
idea. Thus, in the Virgin of St. Sixtus, we recognize, not the image of
La Fornarina, but the transfiguration of her image. None of her features
are left and yet it is she, but so purified that no trouble nor shadow
comes to dim the radiant and virginal brightness of the picture. In
every human creature there is a divine germ that cannot flourish on
earth and whose blossoming is only in the skies; this is the flowering,
the splendour of which is shown in the Virgin of St. Sixtus. We care
very little about Raphael's private life; we only affirm in the presence
of his work that as a painter he did not love for this life only, and
that from the beginning to the end of his career he had the respect and
the taste for eternal love. Since the day when the Virgin appeared
transfigured to the seer of the Apocalypse, she had never revealed
herself in such effulgence. Before this picture, we lose every memory of
earth and see nothing but the Queen of Heaven and of the angels, the
creature elect and blessed above all creatures. In thus painting the
Virgin, Raphael has almost reached the confines of divinity.

But everything in this picture is food for admiration, even the
atmosphere that envelops it and those innumerable and endless legions of
cherubin that gravitate around the Virgin and the Word of God. The
aureole that encircles the divine group shows nothing at first but
dazzling and golden light; then, as it recedes from the centre, this
light gradually pales and insensibly merges from the most inten