The limits within which the form and countenance of a woman may be idealized, are prescribed by Raphael in his works. The presumed age must be that when she reaches the full bloom of womanhood. Youth will not do because it involves an expression denying experience, while physically a girl cannot be supposed to have reached an age where her form has ceased to progress towards perfection. Beauty of feature and form is the first consideration of the artist, and hence his difficulty in fixing an expression which shall be entirely free from the possibility of suggesting desire. For this reason no model, or series of models, will suffice the painter: he has always to bring his imagination to bear, as Raphael admitted he had to do.[a] [a] "E di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi viene nella mente." Letter to Castiglione. It is impossible to find a head of a woman, painted before the time of Raphael, which fulfils the requirements of art as an ideal. The figures are either too formal, or too distinctive in type, or are evidently portraits, while in many of the greatest pictures of the fifteenth century the artists had not yet learned how to put warm blood into their Madonnas. Raphael, however, after taking up his sojourn at Florence, became an object lesson for nearly every school, and ideal countenances were produced by other masters, though no painter other than Raphael succeeded with more than one or two. Nowadays the ever increasing hustle in the struggle for existence, does not lend itself to deep study and long contemplation on the part of painters, but hope springs eternal, and surely the list of immortals is not yet closed. An ideal man of flesh and blood is not possible in the art of the painter, for there is no general conception of male beauty below the level of the god-like. Perfection of form can be given, but a supreme expression in the face of a man implies deep wisdom, and this must necessarily be associated with maturity when high sensorial beauty of feature can scarcely be expected. CHAPTER X EXPRESSION. PART V.--PORTRAITURE Limitations of the portrait painter--Generalizations--Emphasis and addition of qualities--Practice of the ancient Greeks-- Dignity--Importance of simplicity--Some of the great masters-- Portraiture of women--The English masters--The quality of grace--The necessity of repose.