appropriateness of expression. Among his excellencies are particularly to be noted the variety and noble air of the heads, their exquisite individualization, without the sacrifice of any portion of the ideal or historical character, and the remarkable beauty and expressiveness (if the term may be so applied) of the drapery. That quality, however, which has entitled Raffaelle to be justly regarded as one in the first rank of minds most highly gifted by the Creator, is the uniform subordination, in these works, of the means to the end-the predominance of the intellectual and permanent over the sensual and the conventional. We behold in him, not only the Italian of the sixteenth century, but the contemporary and denizen of all enlightened times and Christian lands-not the painter merely, but the historian, the poet, the philosopher, the ennobling expounder of human character and emotions in their universal elements! Of the seven Cartoons in the National Collection, only two relate to events in the personal history of our Saviour; the other five being all illustrative of occurrences in the lives of the apostles, after his ascension. The whole are given in this work, in the chronological order of the respective subjects represented. |