Raphael's "Christ Bearing the Cross" (_Lo Spasimo_) is considered a
masterpiece, from its drawing and expression. Some think it equal to
"The Transfiguration." The ship which was carrying it to Palermo was
lost with all on board. Nothing was recovered save this picture, which,
uninjured, floated in a box into the harbor of Genoa. It is now in
Madrid.
Another well-known work of Raphael is "St. Cecilia," listening to the
singing of six angels, her eyes raised to heaven in ecstasy. A musical
instrument is slipping from her hand while she listens, entranced, to
playing so much more wonderful than her own. On her right are St. Paul
and St. John; on her left Mary Magdalene, with St. Augustine. Cecilia
was a rich and noble Roman lady who lived in the reign of Alexander
Severus. She was married at sixteen to Valerian, who, with his brother
Tiburtius, was converted to Christianity by her prayers. Both these men
were beheaded because they refused to sacrifice to idols, and Cecilia
was shortly after condemned to death by Almachius, Prefect of Rome. She
was shut up in her own bath-room, and blazing fires kindled that the
hot vapor might destroy her; but she was kept alive, says the legend,
"for God sent a cooling shower which tempered the heat of the fire."
The prefect then sent a man to her palace, to behead her, but he left
her only half killed. The Christians found her bathed in her blood, and
during three days she still preached and taught, like a doctor of the
church, with such sweetness and eloquence that four hundred pagans were
converted. On the third day she was visited by Pope Urban I., to whose
care she tenderly committed the poor whom she nourished, and to him she
bequeathed the palace in which she had lived, that it might be
consecrated as a temple to the Saviour. She died in the third century.
This masterpiece of color was sent to Bologna, having been ordered by a
noble Bolognese lady, Elena Duglioni, for a chapel which she built to
St. Cecilia. Raphael sent the picture to his artist friend Francesco
Francia, asking that he "make any correction he pleased, if he noticed
any defect." It is stated that Francia was so overcome at the sight of
this picture that he died from excessive grief because he felt that he
could never equal it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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