INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Wonderful, and almost miraculous, as were the energies which the human mind displayed in Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century, that prodigious development of moral and intellectual resources was not independent of discoverable causes, and successive stages of preparation. The traces of such preparatory steps we may find in the state of religion, of literature, of commerce, and all the active concerns of life; but in no field of mental exertion are they more manifest than in that which, at this period of universal renovation was, perhaps, more zealously and successfully cultivated than any other-the department of the Fine Arts, and, especially, Painting.

Several artists had already appeared, who not only obtained the admiration of their own and the immediately succeeding ages, but have left behind them

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left instructive traces of its progress, even as far as to the limits of the utmost attainable point-the combination of the greatest genius with the purest taste, and the connection of a thorough mastery over the resources of the art with a sobriety and temperance which forbade their abuse. And at this period it was that the illustrious individual appeared, to whom, as possessing, in the highest degree and in a most harmonious union, the qualities necessary to a great artist, the world has agreed to assign the first honours in this delightful province of the realms of intellect.

Raffaelle Sanzio was born in the city of Urbino, in Italy, in the year 1483. His earliest master, if we except his father, Giovanni Sanzio, or di Santi, was Pietro of Perugia, a painter of no inconsiderable ability, but in the hard dry manner which prevailed before the time of Lionardo and Michelangiolo. At the age of sixteen he left Pietro, and worked with Pinturrichio, an eminent artist in his day, at Siena. Attracted by the reputation of Lionardo and Michelangiolo, who presided over the flourishing school of Florence, he repaired to that city; and being, by the study of their sublime productions, in a short time emancipated from the restraints of his previous education, he quickly produced pictures

which determined his place in the first ranks of his profession, and made his name familiar in the Italian capital. Thither, invited by Julius II., he himself proceeded in the year 1508, and was immediately employed to paint one of the chambers in the Vatican palace, which that magnificent pontiff was ambitious to adorn with the utmost taste and splendour.

From this period commenced the execution of those works of "the divine Raffaelle" which have engaged the admiration and exalted the minds of every subsequent generation. The apartments assigned for his labours in the pontifical residence, now called the stanze (chambers) of Raffaelle, are four in number; and the magnificent design of the artist was, to represent, in a grand series, upon the compartments of those chambers, the universal triumph of Christianity-its divine authority, its connection with science and learning, and the supremacy of its dominion over the mind of man and external nature.

Raffaelle was occupied on the paintings in the secondstanza when Pope Julius died, and was succeeded by Leo X. As might have been anticipated, the favour and esteem in which the prince of painters was held