d opinions; but the old chronicler was too often
influenced by popular gossip and personal prejudice to be depended
upon. Many of his stories are positively disproved by documentary
evidence, and for some years he has stood in dust and disgrace on the
upper shelves of the bookcase. From this exile a revised edition has
recently brought him forth to fresh honors. The joint work of Mr. and
Mrs. E. H. Blashfield with A. A. Hopkins has given us an annotated
text which we may read with equal pleasure and profit. This is
certainly the best of all reference books to put us in touch with the
period in which Raphael lived.

The German work on Raphael by Passavant, once so weighty, is now
useful only to those who have opportunity to compare it with other
authorities. So likewise the work of Crowe and Cavalcaselle is no
longer desirable as a sole authority. Even the splendid work of Eugene
Muentz (translated by Walter Armstrong), the latest and most valuable
of the comprehensive books on Raphael, must be read in the light of
later criticism. Muentz's volume contains a complete list of the
master's works,--frescoes, easel pictures, tapestries, drawings, and
works in architecture and sculpture,--each class subdivided according
to subject.

A few of the shorter biographies of Raphael have been corrected
according to the conclusions of the most recent critical scholarship,
as represented by Morelli. Notable among these is the life of Raphael
in Kugler's "Handbook of the Italian Schools," revised by A. H.
Layard, and the life of Raphael included in Mrs. Jameson's "Early
Italian Painters," revised by Estelle M. Hurll.

The latest entirely new short biographies of Raphael are those (1) by
Mrs. Henry Ady (Julia Cartwright), issued in two parts as monographs for
"The Portfolio:" the "Early Work of Raphael" and "Raphael in Rome," and
(2) by H. Knackfuss in a series of German "Kuenstler-Monographien" (also
published in an English translation). Both are well illustrated and
useful books.

Finally the student is referred to Bernhard Berenson's "Central
Italian Painters of the Renaissance" for an exceedingly valuable
estimate of Raphael's character as an artist.

Many books have been written on the separate works of Raphael,--the
Vatican frescoes, the cartoons, the Madonnas, etc.,--but as most of
these are in German and Italian they are not generally available. The
Blashfield Vasari enumerates a long list of them in the Bibliography
prec