With this cordial letter from the sister of the Duke of Urbino, he entered the City of Flowers. He was now a youth of twenty-one, slight in figure, five feet eight inches tall, with dark brown eyes and hair, perfect teeth, and the kindest of hearts. He was received into the homes of the patricians, and was asked to paint pictures for them. Meantime he used every spare moment in study. Especially did the works of Masaccio and Leonardo da Vinci, says Passavant, "reveal to Raphael his own wonderful powers, until then almost concealed. Awakened suddenly, and excited with the inspiration that seemed all at once to flow in on him from every side, he pushed forward at once towards the perfection he was so soon to attain." He copied the horsemen in Da Vinci's battle of Anghiari; made sketches from life of the children of the Florentines, in his book of drawings, now to be seen in the Academy of Venice; stood entranced before the gates of Ghiberti, and that marvel of beauty, the Campanile of Giotto. Raphael now painted for his friend, Lorenzo Nasi, the "Madonna della Gran Duca," now in the Pitti Palace. Until the end of the last century this picture was in the possession of a poor widow, who sold it to a bookseller for twelve scudi. Finally the Grand Duke Ferdinand III. of Tuscany bought it, and carried it with him through all his journeys, praying before it night and morning. "The bold, commanding, and luminous style," says Passavant, "in which the painting stands out from the background, makes the figure and divine expression of the head still more impressive. Thanks to all these qualities united, this Madonna produces the effect of a supernatural apparition. In short, it is one of the masterpieces of Raphael." Another Madonna on wood, thirty-five inches in diameter, owned by the Terranuova family until 1854, was purchased for the Berlin Museum, for thirty-four thousand dollars. After some other works, Raphael went back to Urbino and Perugia, but, eager and restless for Florence, he soon returned to that city and was cordially welcomed. His enthusiasm inspired every artist, and his modest deference to the opinions of others won him countless friends; "the only very distinguished man," as Mrs. Jameson says, "of whom we read, who lived and died without an enemy or a detractor!" Between 1506 and 1508, besides the Temfi Madonna now of Munich, and the Colonna Madonna at Berlin, the Ansidei Madonna was painted for the Ansidei family of Perugia as an altar-piece in the church of S. Fiorenzo. It represents the Virgin on a throne, with Jesus on her right knee, and an open book on her left, from which mother and child are reading. The painting was purchased in 1884 by the National Gallery for the Duke of Marlborough for the enormous sum of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.