"His Sistine Madonna soars above us as our ideal of womanly beauty; and yet, strange to say, despite this universality, she gives to each individual the impression that, owing to some special affinity, he has the privilege of wholly understanding her. Shakespeare's and Goethe's feminine creations inspire the same feeling.... "All Raphael's works are youthful works. After finishing the Sistine Madonna, he lived only three years. At thirty-five years of age (and he did not survive much beyond this), the largest portion of human life is often still in the future. The events of each day continue to surprise us, and to seem like adventures. Raphael was full of these fresh hopes and anticipations when a cruel fate snatched him away. His last works betray the same youthful exhilaration in labor as his first. His studies from nature made at this time have a freshness and grace which, regarded as personal manifestations of his genius, are as valuable as his paintings. He was still in process of development.... What in our later years we call illusions still enchanted him. The easy, untrammelled life at the court of the pope wore for him, to the last, a romantic glamour, and the admiration of those who only meant to flatter sounded sweet in his ears, even while he saw through it. Everything continued to serve him; with the gospel of defeat his soul was still unacquainted." The Sistine Madonna, with the Virgin standing on the clouds in the midst of myriads of cherubs' heads, St. Sixtus kneeling on the left, and St. Barbara on the right, was painted in 1518 for the Benedictine Monastery of San Sisto, at Piacenza, from which it was purchased in 1754 by Augustus III., Elector of Saxony, for forty thousand dollars. It was received at Dresden with great joy, the throne of Saxony being displaced in order to give this divine product of genius a fitting home. It is said that the famous Correggio, standing before this picture, exclaimed with pride, "I too am an artist!" Passavant says, "It was the last Virgin created by the genius of Raphael; and, as if he had foreseen that this Madonna would be his last, he made it an apotheosis." It is interesting to sit in the Dresden gallery alone, before the Sistine Madonna, which has the face of the beloved Margherita, and note the hush that comes upon the people when they pass over the threshold. They seem to enter into the feelings of the artist. It is said that many a poor and lonely woman, bent with years, has wept before this painting. The eyes of the Virgin look at you, but they do not see you. The eyes are thinking--looking back into her past with its mysteries; looking forward perchance into a veiled but significant future. These eyes, once seen, are never forgotten, and you go again and again to look at them.