There is, in fact, a something savouring of overbloom in the Farnesina frescoes, as though the painter’s faculty had been strained beyond its natural force.  Muscles are exaggerated to give the appearance of strength, and open mouths are multiplied to indicate astonishment and action.  These faults may be found even in the Cartoons.  Yet who shall say that Raphael’s power was on the decline, or that his noble style was passing into mannerism, after studying both the picture of the “Transfiguration” and the careful drawings from the nude prepared for this last work?

So delicate was the assimilative tendency in Raphael, that what he learned from all his teachers, from Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, Masaccio, Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and the antique, was mingled with his own style without sacrifice of individuality.  Inferior masters imitated him, and passed their pictures off upon posterity as Raphael’s; but to mistake a genuine piece of his painting for the performance of another is almost impossible.  Each successive step he made was but a liberation of his genius, a stride toward the full expression of the beautiful he saw and served.  He was never an eclectic.  The masterpieces of other artists taught him how to comprehend his own ideal.

Raphael is not merely a man, but a school.  Just as in his genius he absorbed and comprehended many diverse styles, so are many worthy craftsmen included in his single name.  Fresco-painters, masters of the easel, workmen in mosaic and marquetrie, sculptors, builders, arras-weavers, engravers, decorators of ceilings and of floors, all laboured under his eye, receiving designs from, his hand, and executing what was called thereafter by his name.[258] It was thus partly by his facility and energy, partly by the use he made of other men, that Raphael was able to achieve so much.  In the Vatican he covered the walls and ceilings of the Stanze with historical and symbolical frescoes that embrace the whole of human knowledge.  The cramping limits of ecclesiastical tradition are transcended.  The synod of the antique sages finds a place beside the synod of the Fathers and the company of Saints.  Parnassus and the allegory of the virtues front each other.  The legend of Marsyas and the mythus of the Fall are companion pictures.  A new catholicity, a new orthodoxy of the beautiful, appears.  The Renaissance in all its breadth and liberality of judgment takes ideal form.  Nor is there any sense of discord; for the genius of Raphael views both revelations, Christian and pagan, from a point of view of art above them.  To his pure and unimpeded faculty the task of translating motives so diverse into mutually concordant shapes was easy.  On the domed ceilings of the Loggie he painted sacred history in a series of exquisitely simple compositions, known as Raphael’s Bible.  The walls and pilasters were adorned with arabesques that anticipated the discovery of Pompeii, and surpassed the best of Roman frescoes in variety and freedom.  With his