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to make a statue of the Virgin to be placed above his resting-place. He left a large estate, and gave his works of art to his pupils Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni; his house to Cardinal Bibiena; a sum to buy another house, the rent of which should pay for twelve masses to be said monthly, for the repose of his soul, from the altar near his grave; this was observed until 1705, when the income from the house was not enough to support these services.

For many years there was a skull at the Academy of St. Luke, in Rome, which was called that of Raphael; but there was no proof of this, and in 1833 some antiquarians received the consent of the Pope to their searching for the bones of Raphael in his grave in the Pantheon. After five days of careful work, and removing the pavement in several places, the skeleton of the great master was found, and with it such proofs of its being his as left no room for doubt. Then a second great funeral service was held; the Pope, Gregory XVI., gave a marble sarcophagus in which the bones were placed, and reverently restored to their first resting-place. More than three thousand persons were present at the service, including artists of all nations, as well as Romans of the highest rank. They moved in procession about the church, bearing torches in their hands, and keeping time to beautiful chants from an invisible choir.

Fig 44 Fig. 44.—Saint Cecilia Listening to the Singing of Angels. By Raphael.

Raphael left two hundred and eighty-seven pictures and five hundred and seventy-six studies and drawings, and all done in so short a life. In considering him and the story of his life, we find that it was not any one trait or talent that made his greatness; but it was the rare union of gifts of genius with a personal charm that won all hearts to him. His famous picture of “St. Cecilia,” with its sweetness of expression and lovely color—its union of earthly beauty with spiritual feeling, is a symbol of the harmonious and varied qualities of this prince of painters (Fig. 44).

Giulio Romano (1492-1556) was the favorite pupil of Raphael, and the heir of a part of his estate; but his remaining works would not repay us for a study of them.

Of course, the influence of so great a master as Raphael was felt outside of his own school, and, in a sense, all Italian art of his time was modified by him. His effect was very noticeable upon a Sienese painter, Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma (1477-1549), who went to Rome and was under the immediate influence of Raphael’s works. He was almost unrivalled in his power to represent beautiful female heads.

His important works were frescoes, many of which are in the churches of Siena. Doubtless Bazzi was lost in the shadow of the great Raphael, and had he existed at a time a little more distant from that great man, he would have been more famous in his life.

During the sixteenth century the Venetian school reached its highest excellence. The great difference between it and the school of Florence was, that the latter made beauty of form the one object of its art, while the Venetian painters combined with grace and ease the added charm of rich, brilliant color.

Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione (1477-1511), was the first great artist of Venice who cast off the rigid manner of the Bellini school, and used his brush and colors freely, guided only by his own ideas, and inspired by his own genius.

He was born at Castelfranco, and was early distinguished for his personal beauty. Giorgione means George the Great, and this title was given him on account of his noble figure. He was fond of music, played the lute well, and composed many of the songs he sang; he had also an intense love of beauty—in short, his whole nature was full of sentiment and harmony, and with all these gifts he was a man of pure life. Mrs. Jameson says of him: “If Raphael be the Shakspeare, then Giorgione may be styled the Byron of painting.”

There is little that can be told of his life. He was devoted to his art, and passionately in love with a young girl, of whom he told one of his artist friends, Morto da Feltri. This last proved a traitor to Giorgione, for he too admired the same girl, and induced her to forsake Giorgione, and go away with him. The double treachery of his beloved and his friend caused the painter such grief that he could not overcome his sadness, and when the plague visited Venice in 1511, he fell a victim to it in the very flower of his age.

Much of the work of Giorgione has disappeared, for he executed frescoes which the damp atmosphere of Venice has destroyed or so injured that they are of no value. His smaller pictures were not numerous, and there is much dispute as to the genuineness of those that are called by his name. He painted very few historical subjects; his works are principally portraits, sibyls, and religious pictures. Among the last, the altar-piece at Castelfranco holds the first place; it represents the Virgin and Child between Sts. Francis and Liberale, and was painted before 1504.

Giorgione gave an elevated tone to his heads and figures; it seemed as if he painted only the beings of a superior race, and as if they must all be fitted to do great deeds. His fancy was very fruitful, and in some of his works he pictured demons, sea-monsters, dogs, apes, and such creatures with great effect. In clearness and warmth of color Giorgione is at the head of the Venetian painters; in truth, it seems as if the color was within them and showed itself without in a deep, luminous glow.

The most important of Giorgione’s scholars was called Fra Sebastiano del Piombo; his real name was Luciani, and he was a native of Venice (1485-1547). This artist excelled in his coloring and in the effect he gave to the atmosphere of his work, making it a broad chiaro-scuro, or clear-obscure, as it really means. This is an art term which is frequently used, and denotes a sort of mistiness which has some light in it, and is gradually shaded off, either into a full light or a deep shadow. But from the earliest efforts of this artist, it was plain that he had no gift of composition, neither could he give his pictures an elevated tone or effect. For this reason his portraits were his best works, and these were very fine.

A portrait of his in the National Gallery, London, and another in the Städel Gallery at Frankfort, are both said to be of Giulia Gonzaga, the most beautiful woman of her day in Italy. In 1553, Ippolito de Medici, who was madly in love with her, sent Sebastian with an armed force to Fondi to paint her portrait; it was finished in a month, and was said to be the best ever painted by Sebastian. It was sent to France as a gift to Francis I., and its present abiding-place is not known.

While Raphael was at the height of his fame in Rome, the banker Chigi invited Sebastian to that city, and in the Farnesina he painted works which were very inferior beside Raphael’s. Then Sebastian tried to improve by study under Michael Angelo. This last great master would not compete with Raphael himself, but he was very jealous of the fame of the younger man, and it is said that he aided Sebastian, and even made his designs for him, in the hopes that thus he might eclipse Raphael. We have spoken of one large picture of the “Raising of Lazarus” said to have been made from Michael Angelo’s design, which Sebastian colored; it was painted in competition with Raphael’s Transfiguration, and even beside that most splendid work the Lazarus was much admired. This is now in the National Gallery, London.

After Raphael’s death Sebastian was called the first painter in Rome, and was made a piombatore. It was necessary to be an ecclesiastic to hold this office, and it is on account of this that he gave up his real name, and became a friar. He wrote to Michael Angelo: “If you were to see me as an honorable lord, you would laugh at me. I am the finest ecclesiastic in all Rome. Such a thing had never come into my mind. But God be praised in eternity! He seemed especially to have thus decreed it. And, therefore, so be it.” It is not strange that he should have been so resigned to a high office and a salary of eight hundred scudi a year!

Another Venetian, of the same time with Giorgione, was Jacopo Palma, called Il Vecchio, or the elder (about 1480-1528). He was born near Bergamo, but as an artist he was a Venetian. We do not know with whom he studied, and he was not a very great man, nor was he employed by the state—but he dwelt much in the palaces of noble families and did much work for them. When he died he left forty-four unfinished paintings.

His female figures are his best works, and one of his fine pictures at Dresden, called the “Three Graces,” is said to represent his daughters. The work which is usually called his masterpiece is an altar-piece in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa, in Venice; the St. Barbara in the centre is very beautiful, and is said to have been painted from his daughter Violante.

Fig 45 Fig. 45.—Portrait of Titian.
From the etching by Agostino Caracci.

The greatest master of the Venetian school is called Titian, though his real name was Tiziano Vecelli, and sometimes Cadore is added to this, because of his having been born in that village (1477-1576). His family was noble and their castle was called Lodore, and was in the midst of a large estate surrounded by small houses; in one of these last, which is still preserved, the painter was born.

As a child he was fond of drawing, and so anxious to color his pictures that he squeezed the juices from certain flowers, and used them as paints. When but nine years old he was taken to Venice to study, and from this time was called a Venetian; he is said by some writers to be the first portrait-painter of the world.

He first studied under Sebastian Zuccato, and then under the Bellini, where he was a fellow-pupil with Giorgione, and the two became devoted friends, at the time when they were just coming to be men and were filled with glad hopes of future greatness. After a time, when Titian was about thirty years old, the two were employed on the “Fondaco dei Tedeschi,” or the exchange for German merchants in Venice. Here the frescoes of Titian were more admired than those of Giorgione, and the latter became so jealous that they ceased to live together, as they had done, and there is cause for believing that they were never good friends again. But after the early death of Giorgione, Titian completed the works he had left unfinished, and, no doubt, sincerely mourned for him.

One of the most celebrated pictures by Titian is the Presentation in the Temple, which was painted for the Church of the Brotherhood of Charity, called in Italian “La Scuola della Carità;” this church is now the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where the picture still remains. It represents the Virgin Mary when three years old entering the temple and the high priest receiving her at

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