strangest forms of rock and mountain. His investigations into several
of the scientific problems connected with art led to results which
affected in an important degree the work of many later artists.

If Raphael had less originality than Michelangelo or Leonardo, if
Leonardo was the first artist to obtain complete mastery over the
expression of the face and Michelangelo over the drawing of the figure,
Raphael was able to profit at once by whatever they accomplished. Yet
never was he a mere imitator, for all that he absorbed became tinged
with a magical charm in his fertile brain, a charm so personal that
his work can hardly be mistaken for that of any other artist.

Our picture of a 'Knight's Dream' was probably painted while Raphael
was under the influence of a master named Timoteo Viti, whose works
you are not likely to know, or much care about when you see them. It
was just after he had painted it that he came into Perugino's hands.

Although the 'Knight's Dream' is so small, and Raphael was but a boy
when he painted it, the picture has the true romantic air,
characteristic of the joyful years of the early Renaissance. He does
not seem to have felt the conflict between the old religious ideal
and the new pursuit of worldly beauty as Botticelli felt it. Yet he
chose the competition of these two ideals as the subject of this picture.
The Knight, clothed in bright armour and gay raiment, bearing no
relation at all to the clothes worn in 1500, rests upon his shield
beneath the slight shade of a very slender tree. In his dream there
appear to him two figures, both of whom claim his knightly allegiance
for life: one, a young and lovely girl in a bright coloured dress with
flowers in her hair, tempts him to embrace a life of mirth, of

  Jest and youthful Jollity,
  Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
  Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles.

The other resembles the same poet's

  Pensive Nun, devout and pure,
  Sober, steadfast, and demure.

She holds sword and book, symbols of stern action and wise
accomplishment. Which the knight will choose we are not told, perhaps
because Raphael himself never had to make the choice. He was too gifted
and too fond of work to be tempted from it by anything whatever. Always
joyous and always successful, he was able to paint any subject, sacred,
profane, ancient, or modern, so long as it was a happy one. He was
too busy and too gay to feel pain and sorrow, as Botticelli felt them,
and to paint sad subjects. To him the visible world was good and
beautiful, and the invisible world lovely and happy likewise. His
Madonnas are placid or smiling mothers. The fat and darling babies
they hold are indeed divine but not awesome. Yet the extraordinary
sweetness of expression, nobility of form, and beauty of colouring
in the Madonnas make you almost hold your breath when you look at them.

In the 'Knight's Dream' there is a simple beauty in the pose and
grouping of the figures. You can hardly fancy three figures better
arranged for the purpose of the subject. There is something inevitable
about them, which is the highest praise due to a mastery of design
in the art of composition. Raphael's surpassing gift was in fitting
beautiful figures into any given space, so that it seems as though
the space had been made to fit the figures, instead of the figures
to fit the space. You could never put his round Madonnas into a square
frame. The figures would look as wrong as in a round frame they look
right. If you were to cut off a bit of the foreground in any of his
pictures and add the extra piece to the sky, you would make the whole
look wrong, whereas perhaps you might add on a piece of sky to Hubert
van Eyck's 'Three Maries' without spoiling the effect.

[Illustration: THE KNIGHT'S DREAM
From the picture by Raphael, in the National Gallery, London]

The colouring of the picture, too, is jewel-like and lovely, but the
uncoloured drawing is itself full of charm. The grace of line, which
was to distinguish all the works of his mature years, is already
manifest in this effort of his boyhood. It seems to foretell the sweep
of the Virgin's drapery in the Sistine Madonna, and the delightful
maze of curves flowing together and away again and returning upon
themselves which outline the face, the arms, hands, and draperies of
St. Catherine in the National Gallery. You will find it well worth
a little trouble to look long and closely at one of Raphael's well-known
Madonnas till you clearly see how the composition of all the parts
of it is formed by the play of long and graceful curves.

You can see from the drawing of the 'Knight's Dream,' which is hung
quite near the painting in the National Gallery, how carefully Raphael
thought out the detail of the picture before he began to paint. He
seems even to have been afraid that he might not be able to draw it
again so perfectly; therefore he placed the drawing over the panel
and pricked it through. The marks of the pin are quite clear, and it
brings one nearer this great artist to follow closely the process of
his work. It makes the young boy genius of 1500 almost seem akin to
the struggling boy and girl artists of the present time.

From Perugia Raphael went to Florence, where he painted a number of
his most beautiful Madonnas. Then, in 1508, he was called to Rome by
Pope Julius II. to decorate some rooms in the Vatican Palace. The
Renaissance popes were possessed of so great wealth, and spent it to
such purpose, that its spending influenced the art of their age. Many
of the rooms in the Vatican had been decorated by Botticelli and other
good artists of the previous half-century, but already the new pope
considered their work out of date and ordered it to be replaced by