[Footnote *173: This is not so. The first master of Raphael was Timoteo Viti, who, having left home in 1490 to enter Francia's workshop, returned to Urbino in April, 1495. Timoteo was then twenty-six years old. There is a beautiful portrait of him by himself in the British Museum. The first undoubted work of Raphael, probably painted while he was a pupil of Timoteo, is the _Vision of a Knight_, in the National Gallery. Having served his apprenticeship to Timoteo, Raphael entered the most famous workshop in Umbria--one of a crowd of pupils--that of Perugino.] [Footnote *174: The suggestion that Perugino was an atheist, and died without the Sacraments of the Church, rests on no good foundation.] [Footnote *175: The first independent picture which he painted after coming to Perugia was the _Crucifixion_, now in the possession of Mr. Ludwig Mond. This was painted in 1501 or early in 1502, because the Vitelli for whom it was painted were driven out of Città di Castello in the latter year. I know nothing of any return to Urbino in 1499. He went back in 1504.] [Illustration: _Alinari_ MADONNA AND CHILD _After the picture by Giovanni Santi, in the Pinacoteca of Urbino_] Raffaele is supposed to have returned in 1499 to a home where he found few attractions. The moment was unpropitious for attracting the ducal patronage. Guidobaldo had retired from the Bibbiena campaign invalided and dispirited; the descent of French armies upon Italy banished from his thoughts the congenial pursuits of peace, and he repaired to Venice to take part in the coming strife. There was little inducement for the young Sanzio to establish himself at the board of an ungracious stepmother, so he set forth to try his fortunes at the neighbouring capital of Vitelli, and Città di Castello was enriched by the first works undertaken on his own account. One of these, S. Nicolò di Tolentino crowned by the Madonna, has disappeared in the rapine of the French revolutionary invasion; but another altar-picture of the Crucifixion, lately obtained from the Fesch Gallery by Lord Ward, enables us to appreciate this artist's extraordinary promise. But for the name RAPHAEL URBINAS, this would probably be ranked with the works of Perugino in which he was assisted by his pupil; and such as best know the paintings of that master at his happiest moment, can most appreciate the compliment of classing with them the unaided though imitative efforts of a lad of seventeen. The Sposalizio of the Madonna, abstracted from Città di Castello by the French, and now at Milan, is of four years later date, being marked 1504; but it was little more than a repetition of a similar work of his master, which, during the same havoc, was carried across the Alps, and remains at Caen in Normandy.[*176] The only specimen of his pencil still in the city which was the cradle of his fame, is a processional standard of the _confraternita de' giustiziati_ in Trinity Church, representing