After an enumeration of Raffaello's juvenile works at Cività di Castello
and at Perugia, we are told that he who ascribed Sanzio's art to length
of study and not to nature, was not acquainted with the powers of his
mind.[92]
That such was the verdict of Michael Agnolo, is recorded by Condivi; and
from aught that appears, it does not seem either invidious or
incompetent. If Art be a complete system of invariable rules, he only is
a master of Art who substantiates its precepts by equal uniformity of
execution and taste; and till he arrives at that point, he can only be
said to have seized more or less of its parts in making approaches to
the whole, and to be indebted to "study" and not to "nature," if he put
himself at last in possession of it.
Such was the progress of Raffaello; he arrived by degrees at style in
design, by degrees at style in composition, by degrees at invention,
expression, and at what appeared to him colour. His genius emancipated
him from the shackles of prescription and fashion, rapidly, if we
compare his progress with the shortness of his life or the progress of
the rest of his contemporaries, but slowly, if we compare him with
Michael Angelo, whose system of Art seems to have been born with him,
whose infancy, virility, age, exhibit one uniform principle. Every
element of the system displayed in the Capella Sistina and on the tombs
in S. Lorenzo, may be traced in his essays at the garden of the Medici
and in the Holy Family painted for Angelo Doni: but what eye will
discover the future painter of the Heliodorus, or the composer of the
Cartoons in the bridal arrangements of our Lady's Wedding at Cività di
Castello, or even in the Cartoons for the sacristy of the Duomo at
Sienna?
Though the commission of painting in that place a series of the most
memorable events in the life of Pope Pio II. (a Siennese celebrated by
the name of Enea Silvio,) had been given to Pinturicchio, who had
sufficient modesty and taste to avail himself of the superior and
growing powers of his friend,--it has been asked what enterprise of
equal magnitude had in that infant state of Art ever been consigned to
a single hand, without considering that the co-operation of Raffaello
was adventitious, and less owing to the opinion which he had established
of himself in the public mind than to the modesty of Pinturicchio. And
had not Luca Signorelli singly been entrusted with a work at Orvieto,
whose tremendous and universally interesting subjects beyond comparison
excelled whatever the embassies, the poetic and papal honours, the
canonization of a nun, the ceremonies of a council, the death of the
hero himself, and the transportation of his corpse from Ancona to Rome,
however varied by character, impressed by the sensibility of the artist,
or raised above the heraldry of the times, could pretend to achieve
beyond the precincts of Sienna?
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