The matronly sweetness of Raphael’s early madonnas has won them affection from the first. With increasing dignity, they retain a hint of the girlish refinement of their predecessors of the Early Renaissance. But they are less assertively fastidious, more normal and natural. All these obvious reasons for liking them are sound, and these pictures afford as well an insight into Raphael’s consciously directed studies. The effect is ever towards richer and more complicated composition, and towards more interesting and stylistic dispositions of the figures. The naturalness is that of taste and calculation. Near the beginning of the series we have the lovely Madonna of the Grand Duke, 1505, Figure 183. The upright, frontal position and form and serene oval of the face recall Perugino. But reality has supervened,—Perugino never painted such a Bambino,—and for the sake of concentration the background is kept plain. We see in the Madonna of the Tempi Family, at Munich, the Madonna turned in three-quarters position, the pose energized, the body swaying in a slight counterpoise. Then he tries seated poses which offer the triangular pattern of Leonardo. Perhaps the earliest of this series is the lovely Cowper Madonna, now in the Widener Collection. Soon he adds figures, constructs the pyramids more ornately and restores the background of landscape. At the head of this line is the Madonna of the Finch in the Pitti. It illustrates that gracious formality which Leonardo established in the Madonna of the Rocks. Finding the balance of the two standing nude children a little too obvious, Raphael carries the motive to its perfection in the Belle Jardinière of the Louvre. Figure 184. Here, to break the rigid symmetry, the St. John kneels, and superfluous trees have been cleared away from the background. He seeks further to enrich the pyramid, and in the Madonna of the Canigiani family, at Munich, Figure 185, finished in 1507, we have at once the densest of symmetries and the stylistic handling of all the figures in active and counterpoised attitudes. In two years the process is complete. Later, in the Madonna of the Fish and of the Pearl, executed by students, Raphael will adopt diagonal arrangements, he will take up the old Circular form in the Madonna of the Chair, and will amplify the simple patterns of Perugino in the Sistine Madonna and the Madonna of Foligno. The forms and faces will become graver, nobler, more mature, but the whole course is fully anticipated in the joyous and lucid years of experiment from 1505 to 1507. [Illustration: FIG. 185. Raphael. Canigiani Holy Family.—_Munich._ ]