A peculiarly interesting class of visions are those to which great artists have, at times, owed their greatest triumphs. Here, also, the line between mere delusion and real magic phenomena is often so faint as to escape attention. For artists must needs cultivate their imagination at the expense of other faculties, and naturally live more in an ideal world than in a real world. Preoccupied as they are, by the nature of their pursuits, with images of more than earthly beauty, they come easily to form ideals in their minds, which they endeavor to fix first upon their memory, and then upon canvas or in marble, on paper or in rapturous words. Raphael Sanzio had long in vain tried to portray the Holy Virgin according to a vague ideal in his mind; at last he awoke one night and saw in the place where his sketch was hanging a bright light, and in the radiance the Mother of Christ in matchless beauty, and with supernatural holiness in her features. The vision remained deeply impressed upon his mind, and was ever after the original of which even his best Madonnas could only be imperfect copies. Benvenuto Cellini, when sick unto death, repeatedly saw an old man trying to pull him down into his boat, but as soon as his faithful servant came and touched him, the hideous vision disappeared. The artist had evidently a picture of Charon and his Acherontic boat in his mind, which was thus reproduced in his feverish dreams. On another occasion, when he had long been in prison, and in despair contemplated suicide, an "unknown being" suddenly seized him and hurled him back to a distance of four yards, where he remained lying for hours half dead. In the following night a "fair youth" appeared to him and made him bitter reproaches on account of his sinful purpose. The same youthful genius appeared to him repeatedly when a great crisis approached in his marvelously adventurous life, and more than once revealed to him the mysteries of the future. (Goethe's "Benv. Cell." i. p. 375.) Poor Tasso had fearful hallucinations during the time when his mind was disordered, but above them all hovered, as it were, the vision of a glorious Virgin surrounded by a bright light, which always comforted and probably alone saved him from self-destruction. Like Raphael, Dannecker also had long tried in vain to find perfect expression for his ideal of a Christ on the Cross; one night, however, he also saw the Saviour in a dream, and at once proceeded to form his model, from which was afterwards copied the well-known statue of transcendent beauty and power.