ssed in Oriental robes and bows
himself to the ground after the custom of the Eastern people, who are
noted for their courtesy. He offers hospitality not as a favor to his
guests, but as a privilege which he craves from them. His, not theirs,
is the honor, he seems to say.

The three angels have a mysterious air. They are in human form, and
yet they are unlike ordinary visitors. Their attitudes, the flowing of
the robes, their gestures, all denote something unusual. While the
three stand with outstretched hands as if encouraging and blessing
their host, Sarah peeps through the open door and listens to the talk.
A country landscape, such as may be seen in the vineyards of Italy,
stretches away in the distance. Raphael never traveled outside his own
country, and painted only such landscapes as were familiar to him.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM AND THE THREE ANGELS
_Vatican Palace, Rome_]

The picture was intended as an illustration of the Bible. In the days
when Raphael was painting, though the art of printing had been
invented, only scholars and learned men could read books, and those
which were printed were rarely in the language which the people spoke.
Men and women did indeed hear stories read out of the Bible, but they
knew these stories chiefly from paintings, and from carvings in wood
and stone. Churches and monasteries, palaces and public halls, were
adorned with fresco paintings, and these storied walls formed the
people's literature.

Now the Pope, Leo the Tenth, employed Raphael to decorate parts of the
Vatican. The Vatican was the palace of the Popes in Rome, and one of
the open courts of the palace had a gallery or Loggia, as it is
called, built about its three sides. Raphael caused to be painted on
the walls of this gallery festoons of flowers and fruit and sometimes
animals, all surrounded and entwined with graceful ornaments. But it
was the vaulted ceiling of the gallery that he treated with the
greatest care. He made a great series of pictures from scenes in the
Old Testament, and some from the New, and his pupils painted these
upon the ceiling, so that it came to be known popularly as "Raphael's
Bible."

The ceiling is not flat, and it does not stretch without break, but
the gallery is like a succession of arched porches, and the ceiling of
each is divided into panels, sloping in four directions, with a flat
panel in the centre. These panels are filled with charming pictures
which you can see by standi