The colouring of the picture, too, is jewel-like and lovely, but the uncoloured drawing is itself full of charm.  The grace of line, which was to distinguish all the works of his mature years, is already manifest in this effort of his boyhood.  It seems to foretell the sweep of the Virgin’s drapery in the Sistine Madonna, and the delightful maze of curves flowing together and away again and returning upon themselves which outline the face, the arms, hands, and draperies of St. Catherine in the National Gallery.  You will find it well worth a little trouble to look long and closely at one of Raphael’s well-known Madonnas till you clearly see how the composition of all the parts of it is formed by the play of long and graceful curves.

You can see from the drawing of the ‘Knight’s Dream,’ which is hung quite near the painting in the National Gallery, how carefully Raphael thought out the detail of the picture before he began to paint.  He seems even to have been afraid that he might not be able to draw it again so perfectly; therefore he placed the drawing over the panel and pricked it through.  The marks of the pin are quite clear, and it brings one nearer this great artist to follow closely the process of his work.  It makes the young boy genius of 1500 almost seem akin to the struggling boy and girl artists of the present time.

From Perugia Raphael went to Florence, where he painted a number of his most beautiful Madonnas.  Then, in 1508, he was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. to decorate some rooms in the Vatican Palace.  The Renaissance popes were possessed of so great wealth, and spent it to such purpose, that its spending influenced the art of their age.  Many of the rooms in the Vatican had been decorated by Botticelli and other good artists of the previous half-century, but already the new pope considered their work out of date and ordered it to be replaced by Michelangelo and Raphael.  For nine years Raphael worked at the decoration of the palace, always being pressed, hurried, and even worried by two successive popes who employed him.  The wall spaces which he had to fill were often awkwardly broken up with windows and doors, but he easily overcame whatever difficulties were encountered.  To succeed apparently without struggle was a peculiar gift granted to Raphael above any other artist of his day.  The frescoes painted by him in the Vatican illustrated subjects from Greek philosophy and medieval Church history, as well as from the Old and New Testament.  As an illustrator of sacred writ he never attempted that verisimilitude in Eastern surroundings to which Hubert van Eyck leaned, neither was he satisfied with the dress of his own day in which other painters were wont to clothe their sacred characters.  The historical sense, which has driven some modern artists to much antiquarian research to discover exactly what Peter and Paul must have worn, did not exist before the nineteenth century.  Raphael felt, nevertheless,