Raphael's design was to represent Jesus as the Son of God, and at the same time as the reliever of human misery, by an unequivocal fact. The transfiguration on Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed the descent of Jesus, united, furnished that fact. The difficulty was how to combine two successive actions in one moment: he overcame it by sacrificing the moment of the cure to that of the apparition, by implying the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the vision he obtained sublimity, in placing the crowd and the patient on the foreground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers; it was not necessary that the dæmoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means: it is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt by the glorious apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apostle in the centre, who without hesitation, undismayed by the obstinacy of the dæmon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd and the pusillanimous scepticism of some of his companions, refers the father of the maniac in an authoritative manner for certain and speedy help to his master[79] on the mountain above, whom, though unseen, his attitude at once connects with all that passes below; here is the point of contact, here is that union of the two parts of the fact in one moment, which Richardson and Falconet could not discover. FOOTNOTES: [67] Ὑλῃ και τροποις μιμησεως διαφερουσι. Πλουταρχ Π. Αθ. κατα Π. ἠ καθ' ἐ. ἐνδ. See Lessing's Laokoon. Berlin, 1766. 8vo. [68] All minute detail tends to destroy terror, as all minute ornament, grandeur. The catalogue of the cauldron's ingredients in Macbeth, destroys the terror attendant on the mysterious darkness of preternatural agency; and the seraglio trappings of Rubens, annihilate his heroes. [69] Ἐγω δε πλεον ἐλπομαι Λογον Ὀδυσσεος, ἠ παθεν, Δια τον ἁδυεπη γενεσθ' Ὁμηρον Ἐπει ψευδεεσσιν oἱ ποτανᾳ γε μαχανα Σεμνον ἐπεστι τι. σοφια δε Κλεπτει παραγοισα μυθοις. Πινδαρ. Νεμ. Ζ. [70] M. F. Quintilianus, l. xii. 10.--Concipiendis visionibus (quas ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑΣ vocant) Theon Samius--est præstantissimus. At quomodo fiet ut afficiamur? neque enim sunt motus in nostra potestate. Tentabo etiam de hoc dicere. Quas φαντασιας Græci vocant, nos sanè visiones appellamus; per quas imagines rerum absentium ita repræsentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac præsentes habere videamur: has quisquis bene conceperit, is erit in affectibus potentissimus. Hunc quidam dicunt εὐφαντασιωτον, qui sibi res, voces, actus, secundum verum optume finget: quod quidem nobis volentibus facile continget.