to observe that the ideal representation of a dramatic moment, the life breathed into each part of the composition, the variety of the types chosen to express varieties of character, and the scientific distribution of the twelve Apostles in four groups of three around the central Christ, mark the appearance of a new spirit of power and freedom in the arts.  What had hitherto been treated with religious timidity, with conventional stiffness, or with realistic want of grandeur, was now humanised and at the same time transported into a higher intellectual region; and though Lionardo discrowned the Apostles of their aureoles, he for the first time in the history of painting created a Christ not unworthy to be worshipped as the praesens Deus.  We know not whether to admire most the perfection of the painter’s art or his insight into spiritual things.[254]

If we are forced to feel that, with Da Vinci, accomplishment fell short of power and promise, the case is very different with Raphael.  In him there was no perplexity, no division of interests.  He was fascinated by no insoluble mystery and absorbed by no seductive problems.  His faculty and his artistic purpose were exactly balanced, adequate, and mutually supporting.  He saw by intuition what to do, and he did it without let or hindrance, exercising from his boyhood till his early death an unimpeded energy of pure productiveness.  Like Mozart, to whom he bears in many respects a remarkable resemblance, Raphael was gifted with inexhaustible fertility and with unwearied industry.  Like Mozart, again, he had a nature which converted everything to beauty.  Thought, passion, emotion, became in his art living melody.  We almost forget his strength in admiration of his grace; the travail of his intellect is hidden by the serenity of his style.  There is nothing over-much in any portion of his work, no sense of effort, no straining of a situation, not even that element of terror needful to the true sublime.  It is as though the spirit of young Greece had lived in him again, purifying his taste to perfection and restraining him from the delineation of things stern or horrible.

Raphael found in this world nothing but its joy, and communicated to his ideal the beauty of untouched virginity.  Brescia might be sacked with sword and flame.  The Baglioni might hew themselves to pieces in Perugia.  The plains of Ravenna might flow with blood.  Urbino might change masters and obey the viperous Duke Valentino.  Raphael, meanwhile, working through his short May-life of less than twenty [Handwritten:  40] years, received from nature and from man a message that was harmony unspoiled by one discordant note.  His very person was a symbol of his genius.  Lionardo was beautiful but stately, with firm lips and penetrating glance; he conquered by the magnetism of an incalculable personality.  The loveliness of Raphael was fair and flexible, fascinating not by power or mystery, but by the winning charm