THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, 19 SPENSER. No. LIX.-WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22d, 1820. APRIL RAPHAEL.Raffaello Sanzio, the Prince of Painters, was born April 9th, (March 28th, O.S.) 1483, at Urbino in the States of the Church. His father was himself a painter, though an indifferent one; but it may be observed, that a talent which often manifests itself dimly in a parent, shines out with full lustre in the offspring. The germ has come to its flower; and an early familiarity with the art or science completes what inclination had begun. Raphael, while yet a boy, took leave of his parents with great fondness on both sides, to go under the care of Pietro Perugino, one of the earliest masters of modern art. Pietro's style was crude and monotonous, but he had a real talent for expression; and thus the finest part of his disciple's genius remained uninjured, perhaps was even prevented from deserting its simplicity. He afterwards introduced his old master by his side, in his famous picture of the School of Athens. On quitting Perugino, he began to design at Sienna; but was speedily called off by the fame of Da Vinci and Michael Angelo to Florence. Here, after improving his manner by the admiration of the works of those great men, he fell with equal zeal and patience to the study of the ancient sculptures; and what with these, and his own natural genius, succeeded in forming a style of united sweetness and power, which placed him on the throne of his art A certain felicity attended him in all that he did. His genius was strictly what is called happy, that is to say, original, easy, and fertile. The age he lived in was a great one, for his own art as well as others, yet his fame was at its height in his life-time; and he lived to see his school support it. His disciples, one of whom was the famous Giulio Romano, were so attached to him, that they followed him about like a guard of honour. He had the pleasure of having Giulio Romano with him at his dinner-table every day, till he died. His mistress, the celebrated Fornarina, who was also his friend and companion to the last, and to whom he did not hesitate openly to leave the bulk of his property, the reputation of having been as handsome as she was amiable. He himself was one of the most handsome, graceful, and good-tempered of VOL. II. has the The In men. If his life was comparatively short, there is no knowing how much he may have crowded into it. It appears to have been full of pleasing images; and there was not one that presented itse itself to his mind, but what his hand could as easily transfer to the canvas. very number of his works is not among the least of his wonders. short, he was honoured and caressed by the powerful, enriched by the rich, admited and esteemed by the many, and had the love of the fair, and the friendship and panegyric of men of genius.-Raphael died, as he was born, on a Good Friday, in the year 1520, having just completed his 87th year. In those days, when the papal sceptre was in the hands of the Medici, men of genius were rewarded by churchdignities. Bibbiena, who began with a comedy, ended with being a cardinal: so did Bembo, who commenced with love and poetry: and the like honour, it is said, was intended for our painter. Others say, that Cardinal Bibbiena intended his niece for him,- -an honour, which though more to his taste, he is said to have repeatedly put off, probably out of love for the companion of his heart. Perhaps the talk about cardinal's hat was one of the best modes that could be found of avoiding the wife. He was so fond of La bella Fornarina, that the same story is related of him as of Sacchini the musician, who resembled him in the amatory part of his genius. When he painted the story of Cupid and Psyche on the walls of the Chigi palace, he was so perpetually going away and staying with his fair friend, that Chigi at last prevailed on him to let him shut them both up togegether in the rooms that were to be adorned. They were so; and Cupid and Psyche were painted, as it were, at the light of her eyes. His death is said to have been owing to the mistaken treatment of a nervous fever, the cause of which, delicate in his excesses, he scrupled to mention to the physician. But it is understood, that his intense sense of the beautiful devoured him. It is to be observed, that there was one deficiency in our painter's genius, which was remarkable, and the supply of which might have helped to balance the other part of his temperament. In all his works, he shews a singular absence of the love of rural nature. A tree or so is an absolute god-sind. His want of a sylvan imagination even degenerates sometimes into meanness. We know not what his friend Ariosto must have thought of his picture of Parnassus: but instead of any luxuriance of laurel-trees, which he might at least have suggested in the back ground, he has divided it into three uniform parts with three little patches of them, and the Castalian stream issues out of an absolute rain-spout. It is probable, from these and other considerations, that he led a very sedentary life, almost exclusively in the city of Rome, and thus rendered his system still more sensitive than it was by nature to the impression of flesh and blood. As a painter of humanity, in all its varieties of thought as well as beauty, he was never approached. Corregio apprehends as well, perhaps even betler, a certain exquisite maternity and tenderness; but to these Raphael adds every other grace under heaven.-Michael Angelo impresses upon us a certain weight of reflection, amounting to the ponderous; but with all his undoubted greatness, he resoris too much to violence in his very repose. There is too much affectation in him of force and muscle. He cannot sufficiently divest power of the physical; and mistakes Hercules for Jupiter. Raphael knows when to be violent too, and how to make violence intellectual; but still 66 as with a difference." In his Paul preaching at Athens, how admirably has he not contrived to shew the naturally fierce character of the saint, sublimated into a zeal for mankind! In the same picture, is a gross man of the world, a candid doubter, a sneering one, a stoic and his pupil, the latter making up for his want of the venerable and austere by muffling himself in his cloak, and an Epicurean and his pupil, a youth as harmonious in all his faculties as we might suppose Raphael to have been himself. His Christ in the boat is the very acme and tenderest top of all that is meek and sublimated in the character of Christian humility. Leonardo da Vinci's is fine; it is enthusiastic, prophetic, intellectually dominant. Michael Angelo's is as warlike as Christianity is apt to be. But Raphael's alone is what is understood by Christian perfection. It is powerful from the very negation of power. A sentiment sustains it, or it looks as moveable as the gentlest air on the water. To smite that cheek, seems as if it would be to shatter the benignity of the summer heavens, and to provoke the downfall of the universe. The translation of Raphael's works upon copper is more difficult than that of most painters, because he deals so much in delicacy of expression; yet he seems to have inspired the engravers. In his Siege of Rome, the Attila, without being a caricature, is a crowned animal; and the very trumpets, to which he has given dragon-mouths, seem ready to split with the expansion of their jaws and the violence of their outcry. Then turn to his more theological works or to his School of Athens, and you repose at the feet of all that is sage and quiet. You shall have a churchman piercing into the depth of a mystery, or a boy trying to solve a problem, with equal voluminousness of expression. You shall have a young canon blushing over his infidelity at a miracle, and opposite him a Pope kneeling in all the united complacency of his belief and his rank; on one side a number of eager faces pressing to get a sight of the phenomenon; on another, a set of high and dark faces of the finest times of Italy; on another, two boys officiating in surplices, whose young bodies seem palpable through the very folds of their drapery. Then go to the Madonnas and children, and almost wish to be a Catholic; and then again to the series of Cupid and Psyche, and rejoice like a bridegroom to run your course. can. Illness again compels the Editor to make up his paper as well as he He would have his revenge upon it, if he could, and write upon an author's diseases; but he is forbidden. Robin Hood therefore must sing some of his carols for him to "his worthy masters and mistresses.” A specimen is added, of the forthcoming number of the Literary Pocket-Book mentioned in his last; and the number concludes with a characteristic portrait which originally appeared in the EXAMINER, but which is fitter for its present situation. ROBIN HOOD, AN OUTLAW, They sent against him twenty men, All the stoutest of the train, That grew in Gamelyn wood, And not a soul in Locksley town Except among a very few Who dined in the Abbey halls; There was Roger the monk, that used to make And Midge, on whom Robin had never turned With one or two, they say, besides, We cannot bid our strength remain, We cannot bid our dim eyes see Nor tell our friends, though friends from youth, That they'll forsake us never: But we can say, I never will, Friendship, fall off from thee; And, oh sound truth and old regard, Nothing shall part us three. HOW ROBIN AND HIS OUTLAWS LIVED IN THE WOODS. Robin and his merry men Lived just like the birds; They had almost as many tracks as thoughts, And whistles and songs as words. Up they were with the earliest sign All the morning they were wont With swords too they played lustily, Many a hit would have made some cry, The horn was then their dinner-bell; Except when the skies were rough; And story then, and joke, and song, Tingle, tangle! said the harp, A A pleasant sight, especially Or little Ciss, or laughing Bess, Or Moll with the clumps of tiair; No, not a s a single kiss unliked, Nor one look saddening clip ; Only on the haughty rich, For his merry men and the poor. A monk to him was a toad in the hole, Never poor man came for help, Never woman for redress, And went away wet-eyed. |