Raphael Sanzio was born at Urbino in 1483. His father, Giovanni, a mediocre poet and painter, left him an orphan at eleven. Raphael’s first steps in painting were probably guided by Timoteo Viti, who practiced, partly under Perugino’s influence, the timidly idyllic style of the Northern Marches—Bologna and Ferrara. Such boyish efforts of Raphael as the Orleans Madonna, the Three Graces, and the Dream of a Knight, in the National Gallery show Raphael’s complete assimilation of this idyllic manner. The little picture at London in which a stripling Hercules slumbers between an attractive girlish Wisdom and a most innocent effigy of Vice—holding the flower that signifies the primrose path—shows us Raphael at seventeen and by no means precocious. In the year 1500 he was called from Urbino to work in Perugino’s home shop at Perugia, soon rising to the position of foreman. In four years he made the most devout and complete assimilation of his master’s style. Such pictures as the Coronation of Mary, in the Vatican, and the Marriage of the Virgin, Figure 181, at Milan, would surely be reckoned as consummate Perugino’s were it not for signatures and old tradition. The Marriage of the Virgin in particular is merely a rearrangement of Perugino’s composition for the Giving of the Keys to Peter. But Raphael has eliminated unnecessary incidents and has outdone Perugino himself in sweetness and calm. The picture was finished in 1504, and that year Raphael took letters of recommendation from his first patroness, the Duchess of Urbino, to the Magistracy of Florence. [Illustration: FIG. 181. Raphael. Marriage of the Virgin.—_Milan._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 182. Raphael. Maddalena Doni.—_Pitti._ ] Imagine a youngster of twenty-one who has diligently mastered a pictorial style only to learn that it is already obsolete. That is Raphael taking the manner of Perugino to a Florence agog over the battle cartoons of Leonardo and Michelangelo. The coolness with which young Raphael faced this emergency is characteristic. In four years he made himself over into a realistic draughtsman. Abandoning the readymade faces and figures of Perugino, he wisely held to Perugino’s sweetness and spacious compositional patterns. Young Raphael achieves an extraordinary act of criticism. He takes from the reformers just what he needs and no more—from Leonardo his incisiveness and psychology as a draughtsman and his dense and rich compositional patterns, from Fra Bartolommeo his dignity and monumentality, from Michelangelo very little as yet; and, withal, he retains whatever still seemed valuable from his Umbrian experience. Thus with resolute and unperturbed intelligence within four years he completely reconstructed his style, and put himself on a parity with older contemporaries who had been experimenting for a score of years.