Yet his sterling merit was undeviating propriety in the conception and execution of his works. Nothing ever emanated from his pencil offensive to religion, morals, or refinement; all that bears his name would honour the most fastidious reputation. To him accordingly there was granted a purity of taste, in none other united to equal genius. It was this that maintained the elevation of his style amid the conflicting difficulties and temptations of that "new manner" which it was his mission to perfect. Thus, although it is in the productions of his second period that we find the beau-ideal most perfectly realised, yet, even his later works, which descend to a closer imitation of nature, seldom fail to invest her with a dignity rare in the external world. In proportion, therefore, as he discovered or adopted the more elaborate resources and processes of his art, his ripening mind supplied him with themes and conceptions worthy of them, and of immortality. The various series of subjects which he invented for the Stanze, the Tapestries, and the Loggie, indicate a grasp of intelligence, a variety of acquirement, never before or since brought into the service of art, and establish beyond question that the intellect of Raffaele fully equalled his taste.[*191] [Footnote *191: Raphael seems to us to-day to have been a supreme portrait painter. His other easel pictures, splendid as they often are in "space composition," seem to lack sincerity. His frescoes have a perfect decorative value, but little force or real contact with life. If they sum up the Renaissance, they do so only in part, with much sacrifice of truth and of that virility and assured contact of life which were its most precious possessions.] CHAPTER XXX Timoteo Viti--Bramante--Andrea Mantegna--Gian Bellini--Justus of Ghent--Medals of Urbino.