The amiable character, as well as the extraordinary talents of Raphael, soon procured him the notice and admiration of the Florentine artists. Among his chief friends were Taddeo Gaddi (in return for whose hospitality he probably painted the Madonna del Gran Duca and the Madonna Tempi), Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, and Fra Bartolommeo. It would be impossible here to give a list of the works which he executed during his residence in Florence from 1504–5 to 1508, when we find him in Rome. Some pictures were left unfinished at the time of his departure for that city, and were completed by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. A picture sent to Siena, by some supposed the Giardiniera, now at Paris, but more probably the Lanti Madonna, was among these, as well as the Madonna painted for the Dei family: an accurate critic, Rumohr, even supposes that the celebrated entombment done for Perugia, which is now in the Borghese palace in Rome, was completed from Raphael’s designs by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. The number of Madonnas, portraits, and altar-pieces produced in the three or four years of Raphael’s residence in Florence, must of necessity lead to the conclusion that the _repetitions_ of these works, which all pretend to originality, must have been done by his imitators. Again Vasari states, not without some probability, that Raphael visited his native place, and painted several works there for the Duke Guid’ Ubaldo, during the short time above-mentioned: and Malvasia, in his account of the Bolognese school, enumerates various works which were unknown even to Vasari. Meanwhile Raphael reaped all the improvement which the sight of the excellent works of art in Florence was calculated to communicate. The inspection of the works of Michael Angelo and Lionardo da Vinci enlarged his knowledge of form and his execution, while the inventions of the earlier Florentine masters were diligently examined and remembered; yet it is here important to remark, that he never imitated even the highest examples alluded to, as he had imitated the first models from which he studied. This is naturally to be accounted for in some degree by the greater docility of earlier youth; but as so much has been said of the inspiration which Raphael caught from Michael Angelo, in Florence from a sight of the Cartoons, and in Rome from that of the ceiling of the Capella Sistina, it is necessary to remember that a direct imitation of Michael Angelo is no where to be traced in Raphael, and that he seemed desirous rather of exhibiting his own feeling as distinct from that of the great Florentine master, than of aiming at that master’s style.