_Passavant's Life of Raphael_[15] is by far the most satisfactory account of that great and too short-lived painter. It deservedly engaged the attention of Mr Eastlake, who, in his review, has, in an able summary, connected the genius of this extraordinary man with the influence of his times and the place of his birth. Hitherto the school of Umbria has been too much overlooked. Yet Urbino, at the time of Raphael's birth, more than rivalled in art Rome and Florence. The palace built there by Duke Federigo was not only magnificent in itself, but was adorned with treasures of art. Federigo was to this "Athens of Umbria" what Cosmo and Lorenzo de Medici were to Florence. It is not the least interesting fact, that Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, was the historian of its greatness, which he celebrates in a poem, in which the painters of fame are not omitted. It is probable that the early mind of Raphael grew there under the influence of classic art, for many were the treasures of Grecian sculpture there collected. The idea is ably combated by Mr Eastlake, that Italian art was independent of this classic influence, as attempted to be proved by the German school, who wrote to establish the entire independence of early Christian art. The classic influence was felt by Raphael, and by him promoted. It was indeed Giotto who, a century before, had set the example of emancipating art from the previous formal types--animating, as it were, the "_dead bones_" of art. [15] We here adopt the spelling of the name as we find it in Mr Eastlake's review of that Life. The young Raphael, an orphan at twelve years of age, had probably been an early scholar with his father, Giovanni Santi, and was, soon after his father's death, placed with Perugino. He must have seen at Urbino a work of Van Eyck's, which Duke Federigo had procured. Giovanni Santi calls the inventor of oil-painting "Il gran Johannes." Among the painters celebrated by Santi is Gentile, of whom Michael-Angelo said, when he had seen a Madonna and Child painted by him, that "he had a hand like his name." The young Raphael was then favourably circumstanced in his earliest years. He remained at Urbino and in Perugia till twenty-one years of age, 1504; was then at Florence till 1508; and from that time to his death, 1520, with the exception of a visit to Florence, he was at Rome.[16] A very interesting account of many of the works of this great man is added. The "Raphael ware," so commonly believed to be designed by Raphael, was nevertheless not his work. These designs were executed twenty years after his death. Raffaello del Colla was one employed in these designs. The name probably gave rise to the surmise that they were from the hand of Raphael.