It is clear that in reaching for his ideal, Raphael did not strive for an expression relating to the spiritual. His purpose was to eliminate from the features anything which might possibly be construed as indicating earthly desires, and yet retain the highest conceivable human beauty. With this double object contentment is a quality in expression which is indispensable, and this Raphael was careful to give, sometimes emphasizing it with a suggestion of happiness. It is not possible to go further with an expression which is to generalize the highest human physical and abstract qualities, while keeping the figure within the range of apparent feasible realization in life. The result was ideal but not exclusive. It is a universal type, and is suited to the Madonna because there is nothing humanly higher within our comprehension; but it has a further general import which is dealt with elsewhere. Although the aim achieved by Raphael must necessarily be the goal of all artists in the representation of the Madonna, it is of course not essential that he should be accepted as the only guide to her form. Her features may vary indefinitely so long as the ideal is maintained, and Raphael himself painted no two Madonnas with the same features. But certain traditions must be observed, however much one may depart from the actual circumstances of her life. The first is in respect of her presumed age. In pictures dealing with her life soon after marriage, as for instance, the Nativity and the Flight into Egypt, the Madonna is invariably represented as many years older than she appears in Annunciation subjects, though only a year or so actually passed between the respective events. The reason for this is obvious. She must be shown with the bloom of a matured woman. The highest form of nobility cannot be disassociated from wisdom and experience, which could not be indicated in the countenance of a girl in her teens. Innocence and purity may be present, and a certain majesty even, but our conception of the Madonna as a woman involves the triumph over known evils, the full knowledge of right and wrong, and the consciousness of a supreme position above the possibility of sin. Hence in all representations of the Madonna at the Nativity and afterwards, she must be shown at an age suggesting the fullest knowledge of good and evil.